The value, and key, to utilising the world’s social media darling to its full extent lies in comprehensive targeting, compelling advertising, putting product in users’ hands and continuing the relationship with communication that truly engages with, and provides value to, target audiences…said Paul Borrud, General Manager, Facebook Australia, at Frocomm’s 2010 New Media Summit (a full report on the summit, featuring leading Australian marketing, PR and social media pros and can be downloaded at Public relations and managing reputation).
Paul’s presentation was timely. Facebook is everywhere. In 2010 it has gone ballistic in the virtual sense. If there is one social media brand to have your hands all over right now, Facebook is it.
It is the most visited website in the US, outranking even Google, though it still doesn’t have Google’s reach. And Facebook is the most searched term across search engines.
This raises important issues for communicators:
- Is social media (or more specifically, Facebook!) where greater resources should be directed rather than Google Adwords, corporate websites, SEO etc (in both the digital and overarching comms mix)?
- Is social media (or, once again, just Facebook) where searches for information are, or will primarily, take place for information?
- Is the sort of information and the type of communication that occurs within Facebook something that public relations professionals are able to control?
Other facts to raise the communicator’s eyebrow include:
- Over seven million Australians are ‘active’ Facebook users
- Globally, it has over 400 million active users
- In Australia, over 35s is the fastest growing sector
- 18-24 year olds are the core group of users, with 79% of those engaged using it more than email, 38% more than mobile phones and 35% more than any other ‘communication device’
- Facebook operates in 75 languages
- Three billion+ photos are uploaded on to Facebook each month (and this is not a ‘photo site’)
- 20 million users become fans of pages each day.
Thoughts on communication strategy
From a strategic communication perspective, Paul advocated integrating all brand extensions into the same fan page, rather than running a different fan page for each product. Over time, there can be a focus on different products (or services) at different times.
Certainly, this solves one of professional communicators’ greatest dilemmas, that of consistently generating quality content of interest to target audiences.
On the other hand, however, who is to say the brand of one product, despite being the property of a single organisation, will suit the tastes/aspirations/etc of another brand/product? Will it lead to a weakening of individual brands’ equity? Classic marketing thinking would seem to suggest so.
Paul defined his approach to communication into three phases:
- Build a fan base
- Use fans as a focus group
- Launch new product.
As with any form of social media, Paul said a basic premise of using Facebook for commercial purposes is to provide value to your network (or fans).
Somewhat conversely, Paul said to apply the 70/30 rule (i.e. get your network to provide 70% of the content and you just provide 30% - great thought! Easier said than done, though no doubt the clever strategist will come up with solutions to this formidable challenge.)
The notion of authenticity is social media 101, of course. In fact, it should be strategic public relations 101, but that’s another story. A manifestation of this in a commercial sense is, as Paul said, “Asking for forgiveness, not permission.” This has at least two implications:
- Get stuck into social media. Don’t hang around waiting and watching. The only way to leverage is to participate
- Whilst being sensitive to the needs of your stakeholders is of course important, so is realising that mistakes are made. Social media is a new field. It’s okay to step out of line if your intentions are good (if they aren’t, go back to PR school), so say you’re sorry and you’ll try harder to get it right next time: but don’t hang around waiting for someone to say, ‘yes, you may give this a try now’.
As Paul said after the summit, “Conversations about brands are happening regardless of whether or not the brands want to take part. They can be a passive observer or an active participant. When you’re active you can shape your brand in front of a large audience, which will pay dividends.”
There are doubtless some nuances to Paul’s claim that organisations can shape their brand. Plenty of pundits have espoused that it is not organisations that shape brands, it is those who use them. Social media has accelerated this ability of brand ‘users’ to shape what constitutes a brand (i.e. what it represents).
So the notion of who is controlling or shaping a brand is a field ripe for debate and further insight.
Facebook outranking market research?
The issue of using fans as a focus group is a particularly interesting application of a social network. On the one hand it is engaging with target audiences so an organisation can adapt a product and adapt its communication to suit the needs and preferences of those it is seeking to sell to.
But on the other hand this is using two-way symmetrical communication purely to sell a product, rather than do the target audience any big favours. It is marketing adopting a best practice public relations methodology to dress up its profit-making objective. But it is doing so in a very transparent manner, so it is hard to argue that everyone isn’t a winner through this process.
Another interesting dimension of using social media for research is whether social media:
- will overtake formal market research as a means to determine target audience needs and wants
- become a standard means through which to test potential products’ and services’ market potential and effectiveness
- develop methodologies for communication metrics to be developed that clearly elucidate the effectiveness of professional communication to achieve business-relevant results.
Social media conversations: who if profiting?
Paul was adamant that social media is about relationships, not marketing. Yet Facebook (like many other forms of social media), is a mechanism that exists, at least partially, for advertisers, marketers and public relations professionals to help organisations achieve their business objectives.
So the mentality that says ’social media is about relationships, not marketing’ is either specious or, in fact, social media is facilitating a new way to do business, a new way for organisations to think. This is an approach that has been articulated before, but it is worth reiterating:
- The dialogic characteristics of social media are forcing organisations to talk more with their target audiences and stakeholders than they might have pre-social media
- It seems logical to hypothesise that increased dialogue leads to increased understanding which, finally, leads to organisations actually wanting to change their behaviour as a whole (not just in the context of communication)
- The rationale underpinning this is that if an increased number of conversations occur between an organisation and its stakeholders, then unless the needs and preferences of those stakeholders impact on the way an organisation behaves, then those conversations will eventually be seen by stakeholders as meaningless. This, in turn, is liable to lead to compromised relationships, a less favourable organisational reputation and, ultimately, a failure to meet business objectives.
The critical upshot question for Facebook
Is there a risk that its seeming increasing use by marketers will devalue the Facebook brand, one founded on the notion of sharing personal information and networking with friends?
Commerce is everywhere these days (McDonald’s provides encouragement awards/meal vouchers to my son’s soccer and Nippers clubs - much to my chagrin) and people seem very open to commercial intrusion into their lives. So maybe it’s a null and void question/argument.
Certainly, the internet is a pretty social and open environment, so it’s hard to argue that its mechanical communication devices should be devoid of commercial trappings. But there does seem something paradoxical about the notion of personal networking and the commercialism that Facebook’s business model seems predicated on.
It’s unlikely, however, that this will impact on Facebook’s utility as both a social networking tool and a means for professional communicators to facilitate engagement between an organisation/brand and its stakeholders.
Focusing on Facebook results
Paul concluded his presentation by reminding attendees of what to focus on:
- Leveraging the social graph
- Building your brand and shaping it
- Get started and iterate
- Develop a conversational calendar.
A full report on Frocomm’s 2010 New Media Summit, featuring leading Australian marketing, PR and social media pros and can be downloaded at Public relations and managing reputation).
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