Social Media Listening

Social Media ‘listening’ should be a part of every company’s strategy to get feedback and learn how to improve their products and services. And to offer a quick and easy web presence folks can address you at. And this is all FREE! It also provides easy ways to conduct conversations with your customers in a non-sterile comfortable manner. people are much more likely to let their honesty hang out than if they were in person at a focus group. People inherently don't like offending other people even if it means telling the truth, when the other person is right there in front of them.

BUT Social Media is not a viable advertising platform because people find the networks private, kind of like walking into someone’s home so they don’t want to be intruded on. How you feel walking down the street chatting with your friend and every time you mention a word that relates to a product an Ad gets pumped in your face? That is what Facebook dreams of.

So as much behavioral information a Facebook or Twitter has at their finger tips, people do not wants Ad’s cluttering their conversations, and the high level of clutter makes it really hard for a Brand or Business to even get their information read. Much better channels for advertising than social media as it exists today.

Mobile Marketing Anonymity

I might not be a proponent of Mobile Web advertising such as banner ads (annoying push advertising that takes up precious screen space). But there is a HUGE advantage mobile web has over SMS Campaigns. Anonymity. Consumer's have not caught on yet, but they will when a brand breaks the covenant with consumers, but when you send a call action US Shortcode (Text Number) you are sending your phone number with it. There is no rules against a Brand or Agency using your number in the future to contact you. Technically by giving your number in an SMS campaign it is very possible the Do Not Call Registry does not apply since you gave the number blindly by signing up for future promotions.

Mobile Web si different. You are accessing the WWW via a IP point. So your direct phone number is not being transferred every time you access a mobile web site. And when Mobile Web Ad Blocking Software get's developed you will be able to download an APP to block banner Ads.

I truly feel that SMS is superior for Mobile Marketing for two specific areas: Immediate gratification with a coupon or free offer. Or using SMS as a launch pad to your Mobile Website Content. These are very measurable, tasteful, and unintrusive. These are call to actions that are permissive and thus truly powerful for Consumer Engagement.

There also should be plainly written expectations on a website to explain policies to consumers that if they send the SMS Shortcode a brand is not taking advantage and adding their phone number to a database unawares. If you ask people if they would give out their phone number to a brand most would say "Why, What for, or No!". If you ask them if they are aware they are giving out their phone number when sending an SMS Code the answer would most likely be they didn't realize this.

The Twitter Test should Brands truly be using Twitter to advertise

Anyone who reads my posts here or in the Advertising Trade Journals knows I am not an advocate of Twitter as an Advertising Medium. Ad Age gives 5 new people in the Industry to follow each week. So I decided to prove my thesis about the clutter and use of this medium. I am currently following 15 tweeters, some are industry people and some are news sources like Rolling Stone, Vogue, Silicon Insider etc and one is a friend of mine.

Just from these 15 tweeters I have been seeing over 100 tweets per day. I am going to add a few a day that are brands and see how this volume magnifies. Because while I browse through the list of tweets most I don't have time to read because I have my own personal email, Facebook, and my work email to deal with! Never mind private SMS texts I get from friends.

I will update this are progress is made.

But my three basic premises here are:

1] there is a critical size of tweeters that once your following that many there is no way you can see each tweet, which means brands must increase the number of tweets hoping to get through compounding this problem.

2] The re-tweeting measurement is interesting. It is possible that many people all connected and following each other could wind up re-tweeting the same exact tweet/webpage/article within the group driving up this measurement yet not actually expanding who is seeing the message! So there is major flaws in this measurement number 1, and number 2 there is no proof a tweet is seen so tweet broadcasts are measurable but tweet views/reads are not (not sure if twitter can measure a click through to an article I am investigating). So the volume of tweets is not a true measurement of volume of people seeing something or of news getting around. But trust me whomever has the position of 'Social Media Administrator' is not going to be honest about this to their boss because they need to justify their paycheck!

Also I am curious when the Tweetbots will be developed. Studies have shown that 17% of all Click Throughs for Web Advertising are not people but Webbots created to rack up money for whomever gets paid for the clicks. And since another study has shown that 85% of click throughs are done by less than 20% of clickers (meaning less than 1 of 5 people are heavy clickers and the other 80% barely click at all) compound with the Webbots we have a Web Advertising measurement problem.....but I will address this in another post.

3] So I am not a complete twitter basher the idea of a portable broadcast like the front page of Facebook (which is EXACTLY the same btw except without the 140 character minimum) is handy to me if I followed ONLY my friends/family. Though I can see problems tweeting 'I am at a bar come meet me' and forget people you wish not to know this are following you (and you have no control who follows you!)

I am a proponent of having Twitter and Social Networks monitored as a way to increase customer service, hearing what your customers are saying, and then responding to them. The real struggle is even if you have direct emails response is still a challenge to get through all the email clutter. I feel the best way for Brands to connect is in ways that a consumer is actually waiting and looking for a response. If you can work out how to do this successfully, a brand had better not keep the people waiting!

Wearing two hats: Sage Advice for Agencies

This Ad Age post sums up what a Marketing Sensei is:

Wearing Two Hats: What I learned as Marketing Director