#Social Networking Doesn't Sell...

Consumers Don't Buy It from Facebook, Twitter or other social network apps...

We don't typically re-publish lengthy articles, but this one from Keller Faye Group's Ed Keller deserves a shout out. The article points out a point that we've been making for the better part of four years in the course of weighing the value proposition and utility of social networks vis a vie promoting consumer brands.

By Ed Keller

Each week we all see trade press stories outlining the latest and greatest ways that marketers are using social networking technologies to connect better with consumers. One story last week jumped out to me, both because of the headline, and also the source.

"Razorfish: Facebook, Twitter Don't Make Customers Feel Valued" wrote MediaPost, followed by this lead: "While marketers have flocked to social platforms like Facebook and Twitter, consumers still don't view them as important ways to engage with a brand, since they don't meet their expectations. Most people still prefer to connect with brands through more traditional methods, such as email, company Web sites or word-of-mouth."

To reach this conclusion, Razorfish surveyed consumers and asked them to prioritize what was important to them when engaging with a brand, and then asked them to rate how well each of various consumer touchpoints do when it comes to engagement – from the consumer's perspective.

The study found that consumers have the following priorities when it comes to brand engagement, in this order: feeling valued, trust, efficiency, consistency, relevance and control. In other words, says Razorfish, "In a world full of engagement touchpoints, the most important things to everyone are to feel valued by companies they do business with, and to feel the companies they engage with can be trusted."

When it comes to touchpoints, which do the best job of delivering against "feeling valued" and "trust"? According to Razorfish, "the most important consumer engagement channels are transactional email, company websites, traditional word-of-mouth, and face-to-face conversation with a company representative." The least important: "social networking services . . . be it LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, or the even newer location-based social networking services."

"Gasp" says Razorfish, in commenting on these findings. Gasp indeed.

Are businesses making a mistake by investing in social networking strategies? No, says Razorfish: "We believe consumers do not use some of the hot new channels to interact with brands because brands are neither fully nor consistently using them to deliver on the Engagement Elements, particularly in social media." And, says Razorfish, over time this may well change. But for now, they say, "These surprising findings taught us to assume nothing when it comes to why and how consumers interact with brands."

What I found noteworthy about the Razorfish study was the important reminder it provides to marketers that despite the massive attention being paid to the consumer's use of Facebook and other social media and mobile applications, they still use those technologies relatively infrequently when it comes to their interactions with brands. This is a topic I have written about previously, and Razorfish reminds us that this remains true today – even after Mark Zuckerberg was named Time Magazine's Person of the Year and The Social Network is garnering all sorts of awards.

The lesson is not for brands to stop deploying strategies that employ the new and emerging technologies, but rather to remember that truly "social" brands need to engage with consumers through a variety of touchpoints, and the "traditional" ones cannot be ignored in favor of what's new and emerging. Being "social" is less about channels and technology, and more about a philosophy, and a way of doing business—based on two-way communication, consumer engagement, and tapping into your customer's social networks, in the physical as well as virtual worlds. A holistic approach is required, one that seeks to connect with consumers in all the ways they value—including both the old ways and the new.

Email and Blogs: Yesterday's Apps

The jury is in: two of the leading apps that unleashed the power of the web are dead (or soon to be dead).

Maybe not news to some that spend more than 15 seconds following trends in marketing communication, but anyone with a sense of intuition can see the writing on the walls...which are now typically limited to #'s and no more than 100 or so characters.

Email: As reported in today's NYT  "..the number of visitors to web-based email sites (Gmail, Yahoo!, etc.) declined 5.9% from Nov 2009 to Nov 2010, according to comScore. That decline reflects the spread of email devices (e.g. iPhones) which do no need to log onto the Web to see messages; the number of people who use mobile devices to check e-mail rose 40% during the same period.."

More predictive: 24% fewer people age 12-17 used web-based email during the same period. This means that the new generation rising up through the ranks into adulthood, and presumably jobs (lets hope!), will have adapted completely different forms of communication than the current workforce.

Other than using email to transmit corporate communications and the most formal correspondences, Facebook (and other social networks), txt'ing and Tumbling on Tumblr will displace email altogether by the year 2015.

Bloggers are bygone. From 2000-2009, we told our corporate clients "if you don't have a blog, and if you're not maintaining it consistently, your competitors will be eating your lunch.."  This was (arguably) sage advice.

If you're accustomed to changing your underwear, its time to change your 'blogging" strategy; tumble over to Tumblr; a move advocated by Web guru Rex Sorgatz, along with tens of dozens of the most highly-regarded internet gurus. Why?

Simple Math: Social media has killed the ironic or iconic blog "headline"; exponentially more traffic today comes from headlines distributed on Facebook, Twitter and other short-form media-communication apps.

On the topic of simple math: We've insinuated, if not insisted that intuitive marketing strategies will soon be displaced by quant-based predictive applications.

Lo and behold, according to Sunil Gupta, a Harvard Business School professor who teaches digital marketing, "Marketers are moving away from intrusion strategies that use ads running in the middle of TV programs to a more cooperative model in which they try to stimulate discussion across social networks. In the traditional world, marketing used to focus on the middle part of the bell curve and reaching out to them. Now, the way to reach out to the middle part is through the extreme ends of the curve..."

If you're a marcom guru that's over 40 and you don't already have a  mobile device that keeps you connected and in touch, its not too late to get on the bus before it rolls over you. And it will, trust me.