Don’t drag your website into Facebook

The other day I came across this post from eConsultancy while digging around for some examples of corporate use of Facebook.  The author, Jake Hird, had selected what he considers 25 brilliant examples.  What immediately struck me was that none of them looked like Facebook pages, they all looked like websites.  Indeed, this was the criteria the author was using: these were considered brilliant because they had ‘got round’ what was seen as the inherent design restrictions of the Facebook format by creating separate tabs as ‘landing pages’.

What sort of insanity is this?  Surely, the key to successful corporate usage of Facebook is to develop an approach that reflects how people actually use Facebook, based on an understanding of what it is that Facebook is adapted to do.  Facebook is not a website, it is a tool that small groups of people whom already have some form of social connection, use to preserve and enhance that connection.  That is a very different function from that of a website, which is designed as a destination that you drive the maximum number of people to in order to give them information.  The Facebook format is not something to be ‘got around’ it is something to be embraced.

Jake’s logic seems to be thus:  once upon a time we had a thing which we understood called websites.  Then something new came along called Facebook.  Facebook was really different and we needed to find a way to understand it so we decided the best way to do this was to try and turn it into the thing we understood.

I know this article was written some 18 months ago, time for both the author and the companies concerned to learn the error of their ways – but having checked the Facebook pages concerned, nothing much has changed.  Why?  Well I guess there are some powerful forces at work here.

First is fear of the unknown.  Marketing directors want to be reassured that all the knowledge and experience they have accumulated in the world of mass media, can easily be exported into this new world of social media.  It can’t, because social media operates to a different set of rules – as much as anything else, social media is not something you buy, it is something you participate within.

Second is the fear of digital agencies that their business model is melting.  Digital agencies, the smart ones anyway, know they are in trouble.  To quote the boss of one such agency “how are we going to make money building websites in a world where anyone can now make a website”?  However, if they can persuade marketing directors to spend lots of money creating customised Facebook pages or building expensive brand communities – that can be a lifeline.

Third is Facebook itself, which receives virtually all of its revenue from marketing directors and needs to keep them and their agencies happy and reassured.

There is a fourth, which is the fact that a Facebook page is a much better data capture opportunity than a website – hence the current obsession with securing Facebook Likes.  In fact most Facebook strategies go something along the lines of: drive people to the Facebook page, incentivise them to click the Like button, then get them the hell out of there into a digital platform better adapted to doing what it is We want to do with them.  But is this behaviour really sustainable and is it not fundamentally missing whatever genuine opportunities Facebook might present?  Facebook is, in many ways, just a new form of social behaviour.  That is certainly how its users relate to it.  And these users are only going to be prepared to ‘engage’ with those brands that understand and respect this.  (Long term this is also a bit of a problem for Facebook, because you can’t own a form of behaviour).

Personally, I think the sign of an effective corporate use of a Facebook page is that it looks like, well, a Facebook page – an environment that looks and feels exactly like the environment Facebook users are creating for themselves.  It should be a space where people who want to come and talk to a brand, can come and talk if they want to.  Frequently, of course, these people are going to want to ask questions or raise complaints – but that’s fine, it’s called customer service.  Of course, you don’t want people asking questions or raising complaints all over your website – yet another reason why turning your Facebook page into a website is a stupid thing to do.

The fact is that we are now operating in a bi-polar world – the world of traditional media and the world of social media.  The traditional media world isn’t going to go away in a hurry, it is just going to shrink in importance as the social media space grows.  The defining challenge for any marketing or communications director (in fact any CEO) over the next 10 years is how to operate with a foot in both camps and the key to this is the recognition that both spaces are fundamentally different: what works in traditional doesn’t work in social and visa versa.

New look blog

I have just changed the design of my blog.  You will be reading this in its new iteration.

There are three reasons for this:

First – I was bored with the old look, it had been that way for years

Second – I wanted to become more practical, using this site to focus more on what I do as the day job, addressing the tangible issues organisations encounter when they look to make the transition into the world of social media.  The bigger picture issue about the social media revolution and how it’s going to change the world (which I find very interesting, but doesn’t really help a marketing or corporate communications director work out what to do tomorrow), I will now post at my lodgings over at the Huffington Post.

Third – I wanted a format where a larger selection of my posts could visible, rather than just the last one off the press.

For those of you who do take the trouble to follow me on a reasonably regular basis – I hope you like it.

Kodak: its all about the separation of information from distribution

Here is my take on the demise of Kodak.  Whenever I am doing my “What is social media?” stand-up routine, I say that the social media revolution is about the separation of information from its means of distribution.  That inevitably creates a moment of what I like to think is ‘creative dislocation’ within the audience who are expecting to be told that the social media revolution is all about Facebook, blogs and Twitter.  The separation of content from distribution is causing a whole host of other separations: the separation of news from newspapers, journalism from journalists and the separation of many businesses from their business models – Kodak being a case in point.

The problem for Kodak was that information (a picture) became separated from its means of distribution (film and print) and Kodak’s business model was based around providing the means of distribution, hence the reason its business model became separated from its business.

As some have already pointed out, Kodak didn’t suffer from a lack of understanding of the digital environment or a lack of innovation.  It was a very innovative company and was a leader in many aspects of digital technology – but perhaps this ended up as being a distraction.  Kodak should have focused its innovation on changing its business model, not on developing new technology.

There are many lessons here, not least the misplaced belief that the social media revolution is all about technology and tools and that if you understand and use these tools you will be OK.  The technologies and tools of social media are crushingly simple to understand and use – that’s the whole point.  But the mass adoption of these tools is fundamentally changing the rules of communication and the relationship between citizens / consumers / customers and institutions such as brands, the media and government.  You don’t deal with the fundamental consequences of this change without making some fundamental changes to the way you do business.  Having  a Facebook page, being on Twitter and posting videos on YouTube is not a sufficient response.

Don’t be a Kodak.  Don’t get caught up in the technology and tools.  Only the organisations that understand how social media is going to affect their business model, and adapt accordingly, will avoid Chapter 11.  And this isn’t simply about media or digital businesses – it is about any business that still wants to have a relationship with a customer or consumer.

Selling to the Facebook focus group (not a good idea)

Everyone in marketing (and also now politics) is familiar with the focus group.  This is technique where you have a structured conversation with a very small group of people selected to be representative of your whole target audience.  Focus groups work because sufficiently skilled practitioners can draw conclusions and insights from that very small group that are relevant to the larger group.  Their most common usage in marketing to understand how people will react to new products, but mostly how they will react to new ads.   (As an aside, I have always found it amazing how many brands come to understand what consumers think of their products or services only through the lens of how they understand their advertising).

The relationship a brand, or the researcher representing it, establishes with the people in a focus group is quite a strange one.  Quite often, the brand may not even reveal itself, but the participants are frequently encouraged to disclose highly personal information about themselves, which they do both because they are paid a small sum but mostly because they feel flattered to believe that their opinion counts for something.   After the session ends, the relationship finishes.  It is very rare to return, or even report back, to the participants unless they have been recruited as part of a panel designed to see how thoughts and opinions shift rather than define what those opinions are.  Certainly the brands concerned don’t believe there is any advantage in preserving a relationship with attendees at focus groups or even encouraging the participants to buy their product or service: you don’t sell to the focus group, you get insights from the focus group in order to then sell to the much larger group of consumers or customers.

Facebook, as far as a brand manager is concerned, is basically a focus group Continue reading →

Why a social media strategy is very different to a marcoms strategy

The single most important thing to realise about social media is that it is different.  Almost all of the mistakes being made in social media occur because organisations do not fully appreciate this and simply look to drag their existing marketing and communications ideas, campaigns and ways of thinking into the social media space.

Strategy is no exception to this.  A social media strategy is different to a marketing communications strategy for the following, simple reason.  A marcoms strategy has as its output a piece of communication (expressed as an ad, a press, release, a brochure, a campaign – essentially one single ‘thing’ that is presented to the whole target audience).  However, a (successful) social media strategy has as its output a form of behaviour or a process. Continue reading →

Further reply to Cheryll Barron

Cheryll,

It is a shame your blog does not allow comments, because that might be an easier place to have this conversation!  I cannot disagree with anything you say in your reply – it is plausible support for how you might create a keiretsu cooperative.  My issue, however, is not how one might do this, rather why one would do it – or rather why one would do it to create a “publishing and discussion site designed to attract the indie writers we call bloggers”.

One of  the consequences of the separation of information from distribution is that the information then tends to live in digital spaces rather than digital places.  For example, you didn’t come to my blog (digital place) to find my piece on Gutenberg and the social media revolution – you found it “out there” in digital space.  My article lives in a Google search (which is a space) much more than it lives in my blog and its visibility in this space is determined by how people have shared or distributed this article within their own digital spaces not by how many have come to my blog to find it.

In reality, the concept of information living in, or being published by a “site” is dissolving as, indeed, is the idea that there is any collective interest (monetary or otherwise) in the act of publication.  However, there is an emerging collective interest in the act of information sharing and thus there may well be relevance in the concept of  a community (or site) to share information.

Thus, my advice to you would be to take your work on creating a kieretsu coopoerative, which remains relevant, and apply it instead to the act of information sharing, rather than the act of information publication.  There is no longer money to be made in publication, because publication costs nothing.

(Also note: by ‘walled garden’ I did not mean pay-walled garden.  The walls are there to stop the information getting out, not to prevent people getting in.)

Happy to continue the discussion.

Social media: its not about creating brand ambassadors

Last week I was running a two day social media and PR workshop.  After one of the sessions someone said “so, is it like creating brand ambassadors?”  A simple and logical question, but I gave a very poor answer – I said “it is a bit like that, but not the way we have been accustomed to doing it, in that it is not about creating a fixed group of people who will become advocates for your brand.”  This rather poor answer has bugged me but I have realised now that a much better  answer would have been “its not about creating brand ambassadors within your consumers or customers, it is much more about creating consumer or customer ambassadors within your business.”

A reply to Cheryll Barron

Cheryll,

I am glad that Google serendipity brought you to my piece.  (By the way – read Eli Pariser’s “Filter Bubble” for an investigation of the way in which Google is stifling serendipity).

Your model of collaborative ownership of media is interesting – but I can’t say that I can give a clear steer on its chances of success.  I wish I knew the answer to the question “what is the future of media”; all I have at this stage are some clues as to what the basic principles that shape this future may be.  The only thing that I am pretty sure about is that whatever this future is, it will look completely different from what we have at the moment (see Clay Shirky’s excellent “Thinking the Unthinkable” piece).  And my sense is that co-ownership of media may not be sufficiently unthinkable because media may be becoming something that can’t actually be owned in a way which allows any form of monetary benefit.

So what are the clues?

The big one for me is the shift from institutions to processes.  Continue reading →

Facts, lies and probability

Politics in the USA has become tainted by lies, or more specifically by the willingness of large sections of the media to manufacture or circulate lies for political ends.  This is because there is not a BBC in the USA, maintaining a basic standard of rigour in interogating claims and validating facts and it is why the BBC is, in my opinion, an institution every British citizen must fight, to their dying breaths, to preserve from the assaults of government, media barons and “free” market fundamentalists.

(As an aside : it is no co-incidence that the greatest incidence of lying in the British media occurs within the tabloid press, i.e. the area of the media where the BBC doesn’t operate – note the revelations currently tumbling forth from the Leveson Inquiry.)

As a consequence of endemic lying, there is a great deal of focus in the USA on the opportunity for citizens to become involved in fact-checking – note the recent efforts by Jeff Jarvis and Craig Newmark, summarised in this Huffington Post article.  The points that Craig make are all very good, but I can’t help thinking that the solution he is advocating – a huge database or network of networks – may prove unworkable because it represents another form of institution (albeit one managed more collaboratively) to supervise the current institutions which are deemed to be failing.  This seems to swim against the tide of what is happening in social media where trust is being swept out of institutions into transparent processes.   Perhaps, therefore, we already have the tools we need – the databse already exists, it is the social digital space – it is more a question of thinking how we design processes, rather than the technologies, to validate facts.

This brought me back to a slide I presented at a #Phonar workshop at the Coventry University School of Art and Design a couple of weeks ago.  The slide (in all its messy build(ed) complexity) is below.

This was an attempt to use the normal distribution curve to explain or understand the future of media, or more precisely the future of mediation and fact checking.  The basic assumption behind this is that the way institutionalised media has worked to date is a reductive process.  It seeks to cut-away the facts that it sees as not relevant or ‘worthy’ of publication and focus on its own, necessarily restricted interpretation, of what is news or what we need to know.  “All the news that is fit to print”, as the NY Times famously put it – albeit it a more accurate presentation of this might be “All the news that it is profitable to print”.  This because media space is a precious and expensive resource – there is no space within it to contain everything. As a result, the institutionalised media focuses on what it perceives to be “the norm”, that which clusters around a median point which it has set.

But the thing about social media is that it is not restricted – it can contain the entire data set – and the issue therefore is how to create a process that allows us to form a judgement about information that exploits this abundance.  It seems to me that this cannot be a process based on saying “this is right” and “this is wrong”, or setting an arbitrary median point around which to focus, to the exclusion of that which falls outside – this is an institutionalised response.  Rather it has to be a process that allows us to see where on the curve everything sits – based around how many people support a particular fact or truth (the two are different) and sufficient transparency to see who these people are.

The example I used to illustrate this, drawn from an earlier part of my presentation, was the recent #superinjunction furore that struck the UK media in which certain celebrities (e.g. footballer Ryan Giggs) sought, to protect themselves from the intrusive behaviour of the tabloid media via the use of legal injunctions.  A quick examination of Twitter and other social media networks, revealed that the vast majority of people were actually not interested in Ryan Giggs’ love-life.  This, of course, clashed with the agenda of the tabloid media who wished to splash this in salacious detail across their front pages.  In other words readers of the tabloid press saw the Ryan Giggs affair as sitting on a very different part of the curve to that of the tabloid media, who saw it as worthy of acres of newsprint.  This lead me to the observation that one of the reasons many tabloid journalists hate social media is because it deflates their ability to titillate.

What we need to focus on are therefore the processes that allow us to see where on the curve something sits, rather than classifying it as right or wrong, fact or lie.  We also need to take care about what we call truth.  The comments that follow Craig’s Huffington Post piece demonstrate the tendency for many to equate the opposite of a lie as being the truth.  Returning to original exercise, the opposite of a lie is a fact.  Facts and lies are absolute things, whereas truth is a relative thing.  Democracy is about preserving a world that supports many truths – establishing single truths is the business of fundamentalism.

This insight doesn’t give me the answer – I can’t, as a consequence, design a process that allows us to re-establish trust in information presented to us (by the media or Twitter).  However, I hope it does illustrate the direction of travel.