Second time reading the “Tribes” after almost a year. It’s still a quick inspirational read just like the first time. This book is more about the “why” less about the “how” & “what.” Despite all the rants & criticism, I’d still recommend it to all the social media enthusiasts especially those who intend to lead new movements in their organizations. The eight takeaways below are simple concepts that I found worth spreading…
Management≠ Leadership
Management is about manipulating resources to get a known job done. Managers know exactly what they need to deliver and they are given resources to do it at low cost. Managers manage a process they’ve seen before, and they react to the outside world, striving to make that process as fast as cheap as possible. Great leaders create movements by empowering the tribe to communicate. They establish the foundation for people to make connections, as opposed to commanding people to follow them.
More…
Do people actually look at ads on social media sites? Marketers face the constant challenge of keeping up with and understanding consumer search behavior. Social networking sites offer opportunities to develop a relationship between brands and consumers, display ads and search. But a lot of confusion over the effectiveness of advertising on social networking sites still exists. An eye tracking study conducted on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube by a digital marketing company reveals trends about the way people interact with paid ads in social media sites. The study hopes to alleviate some of the mystery.
Oneupweb found that not only do people spend time viewing paid ads on social networks, but they often looked at the ads more quickly once they landed on the search results page. For example, 65% of participants engage with sponsored ads within the first 10 seconds of their search. Often times, the path eyes scan the page often does not follow the order of the search results. Contrary to expected behavior, sponsored ads were looked at before the 3rd or 4th result. The Oneupweb study indicates similar behavior was observed throughout the YouTube search. The participants engaged with the sponsored ads in the process of completing the search task. Twitter does not support sponsored ads but the study still observed users’ search habits on Twitter as it has become an essential social marketing channel. About half of survey participants revealed they were satisfied with their brand search on Twitter. Many liked that they could find the most current opinions about a product. If you would like a PDF copy of the study results, access it here!
Okay, we’ve established that there’s not blindness toward ads in social networks, people still look at the ads. But do they click on them? Unlike searching on Google, the interaction with content in social media sites is very different. Many marketers including myself believe that opt-in advertising works best, while behavior-based campaigns and randomly generated ads are far less successful. In my opinion, this notion still holds true although the end users are becoming more acceptable of sponsored ads on social sites. Niche targeting and relevancy are the two areas advertisers need to focus on more when they try to apply their brand campaigns to those new environments. Will targeting based on niche, geographic location, interest, lifestyle & social graph be the future of advertising? Certainly! Will “engagement ads” change the game of online advertising after Google’s creation of “contextual ads” (judge the quality yourself)? Sooner or later. As of now, there is still a lot left to be desired!
Last black Friday March 13th 2009 was the 20th anniversary of the World Wide Web. While many of us take this information-sharing protocol for granted like it has always been there, it’s rather difficult to believe the fact that the social web is merely 20 years young, a year away from its legal drinking age. Of course we need to thank
Sir Tim Berners-Lee for his incredible vision on this “play project,” which should have earned him an international holiday. But more importantly, 20 years after the inception of the World Wide Web, companies have just started treating their presence on the Web more seriously than an online brochure. It’s about time, companies! Although the learning curve is steep, the cost of change is high, it is still absolutely necessary to participate in this intangible revolution. Why? Here are two basic facts about the Web that might help you understand why.
- The Web is a lively place where people connect & converse, it is not an extension of media channels
Does communication technology have to roll out incrementally? Many people seem to assume so. If TV is radio + visual stimulus, then Internet should be Television + something else! But what is that “something else?” Cheaper ad spaces ? Infinite channels ? A “buy” button ? Companies and marketers desperately tried to fill in the blank in order to superglue the Web onto the back of the TV’s history. That way this online market can be monetized, advertising can thrive again, everybody can go back to do their business as usual. Such wishful thinking didn’t go far at all, because the Web is a whole different beast that challenges everything we’ve experienced for the past 200 years. It is a global conversational space where everyone on it can have his/her own voice without any hierarchical management and control. So far it has attracted close to 1.6 billion people in the world, and it’s continuing to expand. t is a real place where people can learn from each other, debate, argue, comment; connect to those who share the same interests, form communities; access information, exchange knowledge; look for business vendors, do business with each other, and the list of activities goes on and on.Sounds different from what TV can do us? Ask the early founders of the Internet, it was intended to be a revolution. What does it mean for companies and marketers then? If TV was the perfect medium for advertising, then the Web is the anti-advertising medium by nature. If TV was the glamorous broadcasting tool for big companies, then the Web is the free playground for ordinary you and me who longs to have a voice. So before developing your next marketing communication plan, think again, 1.6 billion of us are no longer the same passive couch-potato audience.
- The Web is where authenticity lives, exaggeration dies
The word “authenticity” has been dancing next to our ears lately, thanks to the advocates of social media =) The reason why authenticity matters more on the Web is very simple: we get smarter as the network gets larger. In the old days of mass media, messages were distributed on a one-way street via the one-to-many megaphone. We had no way of verifying our doubts, no immediate access to satisfy our curiosity. But now with a quick search on Google or 3rd party forums, the truth we’ve always desired will easily rise above the puffery & targeted corporate messages. If nothing more, the Web reveals corporations’ problems. And those problems are not new, they have been there for a long time. The difference is that what these little voices used to say to a single friend now becomes accessible to the whole world. You can continue to produce corporate propaganda and fancy banners, but they would never be able to outnumber the pure human voices on the Web. The wisdom of crowds plus the speed of the Internet can smell those
PR spins & advertising exaggerations from miles away. Maybe truth hurts, but remember the
big brother is watching, and it’s us.
- What’s the solution then?
Listen to the little voices, mock yourself if you dare & most importantly, get closer to your customers! We will reciprocate your effort by linking you, digging you, tweeting you and talking about you…After all, the most successful form of advertising is word-of-mouth, isn’t it? Luckily, the technology available today can amplify the “word-of-mouth” effect that goes beyond your wildest dream. One thing to keep in mind though, history doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes. Many savvy marketers have recognized that technology is not leading to a new way of doing business but rather to an old way of doing business based on social need and human touch. It’s going to be a long and arduous road to go back to the old-fashion way after you have indulged in benefits coming out of mass production and mass media for two centuries. But we are in this revolution with you. We are not expecting you to be “perfect,” we just want you to be honest and try to be “better.” You can start by talking in our language , showing us who you really are (not your brand positioning statement, but the actual employees behind the firewall), sharing your resources and knowledge base. As long as making money is not your only incentive, the Web welcomes your participation!
