Top 5 Misconceptions About Social Media

EDIT: This is a reposting of my post that originally appeared on Widmeyer Communications' website.  I realize it's a little late considering when Ayelet's post originally came out, but I don't think these misconceptions have changed much in that time.

Top 5 Misconceptions About Social Media

Ayelet Noff, over at Socialmedia.biz, has a great post on the top 5 misconceptions about social media.  This is something I have seen from clients and potential clients in my work personally, but also something that echoes throughout the industry.  Many clients are comfortable with the ‘old media’ way of doing things and now that the buzzwords of the day are Twitter and Facebook, these clients are a bit hesitant to use social media.  I think Ayelet has accurately captured those concerns.

Misconception #1: Social media is only right for certain brands

Noff correctly states that “Social media is right for every brand as long as the brand is able to find its target audience within a certain platform and converse/interact with it in an effective manner.”  Social Media is social.  That means you have to actively engage your audience in a conversation.  You need to talk with them, not at them.  That doesn’t mean you need to use all of the latest, hippest tools to do it, but if you have a business, it’s extremely likely that in 2009, your audience is online somewhere.  Join in the conversation where it’s already happening.

Misconception #2: Social media is all about getting traffic — and quickly

Noff says, “Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither is a community on Facebook.”  I think this misconception is probably the most important one of the whole article.  I can’t tell you how many clients think that by making a Facebook page, their website will crash from all the resulting traffic from their new ‘friends.’  To be fair, it’s not entirely their fault.  The mainstream media will have you believe that everyone on YouTube becomes famous overnight.  And yes, there have been lots of sensations and fantastical things that seem to appear out of nowhere.  Because information is so easy to share on social media sites, the tendency is to believe that everything will just magically get a million views just like that.

The reality is less sexy, but no less important.  You need to engage with your audience and have that conversation in order to build trust.  As their trust in you builds, they’ll turn to you first to find the solutions to their problems.  And they’ll tell their friends about it.  But these things take time.  Think about your own relationships in real life: how many of you completely trusted and felt like they knew someone the moment they met them?  Likely, not many of you.  And if you do think you did, it’s probably due to the positive feelings you attribute to that person in retrospect.

Social media is a tool.  And it’s a tool for you to use for the long haul.  Is your brand just in it for tomorrow or are you in it for the long haul too?

Misconception #3: “By using social media we will lose control of our brand’s image”

NEWS FLASH: You already don’t have control of your brand.  What?!  Before you fall out of your chair, let me tell you that this is not necessarily a bad thing and you are not losing ALL control either.  This is the quote that hits the nail on the head: “People will talk about your brand whether you like it or not. Opening a Facebook page is not going to change it and not opening a Facebook page is not going to make it go away.”  People are going to talk about your brand no matter what.  If someone has a good experience they’re going to tell people about it.  How did you find out about your doctor?  I’m willing to bet it was a referral either from a friend or family member or another doctor.  But I bet you didn’t hear about your doctor from an advertisement.

The same applies if they have a bad experience- people will talk.  Social media just makes it easier to talk, but rest assured, people are still talking about you regardless.  Injecting yourself into the conversation shows your customers and audience that you care and are willing to talk with them.  If you’re not willing to have an open conversation then the problem lies more with you than with your customers.  If they have your trust, you’ll find that they often will do the good kind of talking for you.

You can’t completely control the conversation but you can be a part of it and help to steer it rather than just sit on the sidelines and watch it pass you by.

Misconception #4: Social media is just a fad

“Social media is an inevitable digital evolution of our desire as humans to communicate with one another. It is a desire that we always had and will always continue to have as long as we are human.”  Like Misconception #3, people are going to talk.  Social media has just given us the tools to make it easier to do.

I was fortunate to be at one of the first colleges to have Facebook when it first came out- that was 6 years ago. Think Facebook is going away?  It continues to grow.

Misconception #5: “I don’t need a professional to do social media for me”

This is the only point where I think there’s a little leeway to be given.  Noff says that companies shouldn’t just get a college student to do their work when it comes to social media.  While I agree that this person needs to understand exactly what they are doing and needs to have prior experience, that doesn’t mean there aren’t college students or college-age young adults who do know how to do so effectively.  In fact, social media has become one of the great democratizers of the communications world.  Knowledge is readily being passed on at speeds unheard of just a few short years ago.  Do I think you should hire any kid who says they know Facebook? No.  But that doesn’t mean there aren’t kids out there who have experience already working with brands.

That being said, and a point that Noff also makes, the end goal should be to get the client to be able to handle the work for themselves after a training period.  But for an organization that’s only familiar with the old media way of doing things, I wouldn’t recommend taking it on itself until at least talking with a social media practitioner.

Conclusion:

Overall, the most important thing a brand can do is educate itself.  Would you launch into a new realm of product before learning more about what’s out there? No, of course not.  That feeling should also apply towards social media.

What do you see as the biggest misconceptions out there?

Summary of Chris Brogan and the Trust Summit

I had the pleasure of attending the Trust Summit with Chris Brogan and a cast of others last Friday at the Harvard Club here in New York.  Copies of Chris's new book, Trust Agents, were included in the low price of admission.  I already had a copy so got a second! 

I've been a fan of Chris for a while so it was great to finally meet him, ask him a question, and get my book signed.  He really was as gracious in person as he comes across online.

So I just wanted to touch on some of the points he made and hopefully I can get the thoughts of the others in a future post. 

What if you made your most disgruntled customer your CMO?

This is a really interesting idea.  Chris talked about the guy who tried to bring his guitar on a United Airlines flight and they messed it up and he complained about it in a YouTube video.  That guy got tons and tons of views and United caught lots of flack. So what if they hired that guy as their CMO?  Seriously.  I'm sure they'd learn a lot about customer service.  And I bet a lot more people would want to fly their airline.

New tools relate basic human passion

Basically, the more things change, the more they remain the same.  The reasons why we trust people today are the same as the reasons why people trusted others in the past.  Today, we have tools like the Internet, but we still look for indicators of trust when we connect with people online.  These reasons haven't changed and they're not going to change.  It's only the tools that have changed.

Relationships matter before the sale and after

If you're going to be successful in the digital economy you can't just open up shop, plant a flag, and expect people are going to flood your digital store.  You need to be there before and after the sale.  If you just pop in when it's convenient and when you're looking to sell something, people are going to tune you out.  People don't want to engage with businesses, they want to engage with people.  They'll gladly spend their money on your product or service but they hate being sold to.  I've never met anyone who likes being sold to.  That doesn't mean they don't like the products they buy.  In fact, there are more communities around products than you could believe.  But if you go in trying to hawk your wares, you won't be One of Us (a concept from Chris's book.)

Metrics

I'll combine two points here:

1. It’s not how many hits or views, but potential sustainable relationships over time
2. We need more productive numbers, not more numbers

There's a huge focus on numbers and how many hits, views, friends, and followers you can get.  As someone once said, (and no, I don't know whom) there are lies, damn lies, and statistics.  If you have 20,000 hits to your site, but only 300  people take the desired action you want them to take, either signing up for something or actually making a purchase, then the fact that you have 20K hits doesn't really matter.  But if you only have 1,000 hits and 150 people take a desired action, then that's a lot more meaningful.  It's better to have a smaller community that's actively engaged and spending money than a lot of attention from people who aren't doing anything for you.  It's the quality relationships that you want to have.

And trying to measure everything is not necessarily going to help.  You don't want to get to a state of being so concerned with measurement that you don't take action.  There's a phrase I like- paralysis by analysis.  You need to know what people are saying, not just how many are saying it.  Step back and look at the bigger picture.

Conclusion:

These were just some of the great points that Chris made.  I'm going to try and cover the remarks and concepts of the rest of the panelists in a later post.  It was great to finally meet Chris and hear it straight from his mouth.  It's no wonder why he's so respected in the field- he's a talented guy and a damn nice one too.

Also check out Amanda Arykoff's wrap-up of the summit.  She has links to some other reviews and I haven't had a chance to review them yet but hopefully can soon.

Brouhaha Over PC Version of Modern Warfare 2

So today on Digg, I came across this article about what's happening with the PC version of Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2.  Essentially, Infinity Ward has announced that it's going to take away private servers for multiplayer and not allow user-created maps and mods.  

Personally this doesn't bother me all that much as I'm strictly a console gamer;  I gave up on PC gaming a long time ago.  While this really doesn't have any effect on me, I get where the PC gamers are coming from and I think Infinity Ward is making a big mistake.  What I think they are really doing is trying to get players to buy their own content, namely in the form of maps, instead of letting users create their own.  Additionally, the server connections will only be IW's in lieu of allowing private ones.

The server mistake is a really boneheaded move.  When Modern Warfare came out, Microsoft's servers went down during the holidays rendering the game unplayable from the multiplayer standpoint on the 360.  This created a huge fiasco and Microsoft responded by giving out free cards for Live, if I recall correctly.  They simply couldn't handle the load on their servers.  So I can't understand why Infinity Ward wouldn't allow private connections when Modern Wawrfare 2 is already anticipated to be the Game of the Year.  The preorders for the 360 alone are already listed at over 1.6 million copies.  In fact, it's being touted as being the "biggest entertainment launch of all time."  So it's all but certain that there will be outages in the multiplayer.  I can't understand why they wouldn't let matches be connected directly to each other for the inevitable case of their servers going down.

Taking mods away is also a boneheaded move.  While mods are not really important in the console scene, except for maps, they're hugely important in the PC scene.  Personally I have no problem with paying $10 for some extra maps if the levels look interesting enough.  But I think it's clear that the reason for IW doing this is just because they can.  The PC community thrives on user created mods.  In the PC version of games the mods aren't just maps, but also characters, weapons, costumes, physics engines and more.  They're really popular and can completely change the game.  In fact, several games, such as Counter Strike (Half-Life) and Team Fortress (Quake) have come back from near obscurity to be completely revived by modders.  These games are still being actively played today, despite their age.  So it's really just a slap in the face to some of Modern Warfare's biggest fans.  These are the people who are taking time to modify and improve the game, the people who are so passionate about the game that they take time to create things for it.

Then there's the issue of distributing it over Steam, but I'm not going to touch that for now.

There's even a petition going around to boycott the game.  As I said this doesnt affect me in any way and I absolutely cannot wait for the game.  But I do think IW is being a bit foolish in excluding a core group of devoted fans.

Quick Review of Tweetie 2 for iPhone

I just wanted to post a quick review of Tweetie 2 for the iPhone.  It's only been out for a few days (I think since Friday), so I don't have a ton of feedback just yet.  So far though, I like it.  I've been going through a number of different iPhone apps; the one I was using most recently was Twitterific.  But I've been using the Tweetie desktop app for Mac so I thought I would check it out, especially since there's been some buzz around it.

I must confess- this is actually the first iPhone app I've bought- everything else has been free.  But at $2 and since I was already using the ad-supported desktop app, I figured I should pay up.  And so far, so good.

One of the hits I think is the UI.  It's pretty easy to use and navigate.  On his blog, I think he mentioned that he wanted the UI to be as simple as possible, much like Apple's general design philosophy.  Another great feature is the landscape-view, something Twitterific doesn't do.  Search is another handy feature.  The additional features in the compose message section are great- camera, photo library, geotag, shrink URLs, and the ability to pull up another person's username and add in hashtags.  It also pulls in nearby tweets and displays trending topics and allows you access to Twitter-search and the option to save those searches.  A huge feature I love is the ability to edit your profile right from the app.  I haven't seen that in any iPhone app I've used yet for Twitter.  Tweetie also supports multiple user accounts and access to other Twitter services like Tweet Blocker, Follow Cost, and Favstar.fm.  It also supports sending links you want to read later to Instapaper and allows you to choose your URL shortening, pic, and video services.

One quick feature request I have: When you come across a tweet in your feed that has a link in it, you have to tap the tweet which then opens it up in another window and then allows you to click the link.  That's a fairly annoying extra step.  In Twitterific, you were able to just click the link right from the feed which opened it up in the built-in browser.  If we're going to keep things as simple as possible here, then let's eliminate that extra step and keep it simple.

In short, Tweetie's been great so far and maybe after I've spent some more time with it, I'll post some further thoughts.

Google Hot Trends Added to Google Search

From SearchEngineLand comes a cool piece about Google's new Hot Trends.  The feature shows real-time search trends alongside general searches.  Google is definitely trying to cash in on the buzz around real time search and I certainly can't blame them for trying. 

According to the article, "“The idea behind the [Hot Trends] OneBox is to not only provide you with search results as you’d want but also extra meta data on how popular the search is and whether it has peaked in interest, plus the number of sites that are creating chatter and buzz about this particular topic or person, to give a relative hotness rating as well” said RJ Pittman, director of product management for consumer search properties at Google.""

It returns hot trends on an hourly basis.

This is a very budding area and I definitely expect to see more apps coming out in the near future that seek to make sense of real time search.  Google looks like it's trying to take a stab at trending topics on Twitter.  For me, I now seem to use Twitter more and more for my general news awareness so this is definitely a fascinating experiment for Google.

I'm definitely curious to see how this plays out.