Brands and Platforms Refocus on Fans and Followers

Twitter cofounder Ev Williams spoke out this week saying that Twitter followers really aren’t the most important metric for users. Instead he said, “The thing I think would be more interesting than followers is retweets,” because it will do a better job to get an idea of how your content was distributed.

Ultimately, it’s about how many people saw your content, according to Williams, which is part of the reason Twitter has been restricting its API to third-parties. If Twitter controls the interface, it can deliver better data than we can get elsewhere.

Are Platforms Moving Away from Cosmetics?

Source: stock.xchngFans, followers, subscribers, etc. really don’t mean a heck of a lot. It’s gotten so bad that fake followers and likes have been bought, which Facebook took steps to combat this week when it removed a vast amount of fake accounts.

A follower or a fan is cosmetic if the brand is unable to entice the person on the other end to take action. Plus, there’s the challenge that a brand really doesn’t own its followers or fans. They’re merely rented for as long as the brand uses a particular social network or until the social network decides to change the rules.

It’s clear that both Facebook and Twitter know that the obsession with followers and likes is coming to an end, which points to a need to evolve. However, for Facebook in particular, this obsession has led to a lot of revenue as advertisers use Facebook ads to build their fan bases. Still, platforms are looking at other ways to show value beyond amassing as many people as possible.

Platforms refocusing may force marketers to refocus as well.

Are Marketers Ready?

Fans and followers make life simple for us. The idea of “the more, the better” appeals to marketers’ need to see scale and reach as many people as possible.

The question is do we want what’s easy or what is right? The right approach is getting as many of the right people as possible, not just anyone. Those are the people you can distribute your brand message to in a way that aligns with their passions and their personal interests.

The benefit of going after the right people is a brand’s message doesn’t fall on deaf ears, which means the brand looks more successful because it sees a higher level of engagement.

Are we entering an age of really putting quality over quantity? I hope so.

Weeding Out Fake Followers

Source: stock.xchngIn an effort to maintain its position as a “genuine advertising platform” and give brands a more accurate measure of their Facebook fans, Facebook has announced that it is working to remove fraudulent Likes from spammers, malware and fake accounts. All of this follows a recent and disturbing trend of people and brands purchasing fake Likes and Twitter followers.

According to Facebook, this will likely result in about a 1% decrease in Page Likes. That’s right. Brands will likely experience a decline in the number of people who ‘Like’ their Pages. I know. This is unacceptable! …I’m kidding, of course.

This Shouldn’t Matter

It shouldn’t have to be said, but this doesn’t matter. In fact, it’s a very good thing. Whether brands encouraged it or not, there’s a very good chance that across all of their marketing channels, they have ‘dead’ leads—email addresses that are no longer active, Twitter followers who are spammers, blog subscribers who no longer pay attention and so on.

Facebook’s doing us a favor. As marketers, we should constantly work to ‘weed out’ the dead leads. This includes removing fake followers on every channel. They give a brand a false sense of where it stands and who its reaching. In fact, some bloggers actually move their blog RSS feeds by announcing it on their blogs. The people who move to the new feed are the real followers. The people who don’t weren’t paying attention anyways.

Look Beyond Vanity Metrics

All of this goes to show that metrics like ‘likes’ and followers are merely vanity metrics. They’re nice to put on a slide and to bring up at a conference, but they lack substance. In fact, as Facebook has shown, they may not truly be accurate.

The true value lies in a brand’s ability to measure the activity those numbers represent. What buyer behavior do fans and followers exhibit that others do not? Do they share more brand content? Are they more likely to buy?

Facebook Pages Should Be Communities

Facebook’s actions should help to refocus some brands out there that have gotten distracted by vanity metrics. Facebook allows brands to tap into the largest group of users ever on one platform to hopefully gain their attention, earn a ‘like’ and turn them into something more—a community of people invested in the brand and helping it succeed by sharing their personal thoughts and opinions with the brand and social connections (what a sentence!).

A marketer looking to grow a community doesn’t want vanity metrics. It wants the brand’s closest advocates to build the foundation of a community that can maximize Facebook’s potential.

Don't Forget to Welcome Newcomers

http://www.sxc.hu/photo/993600There’s nothing more awkward than walking right into the middle of a conversation with no context and only a hint of what is being discussed then being asked to contribute. How do you respond? You can’t… at least, not meaningfully. Still, many brands ask their customers to do this everyday.

Brands are constantly having conversations with customers through various social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, which is excellent for customers already part of the conversation, but what about new people?

What if someone were to visit your Twitter profile for the first time or land on your Facebook Page? Would they know what’s going on? Would they understand the conversation that’s taking place?

That first impression is critical to getting a customer to sign on to have an ongoing dialogue. Brands need to make him or her feel welcome and that he or she has a stake in the conversation. They should understand what they can expect from the brand and what the brand wants them to do as well.

Social media conversations are often broken up into chunks over an extended period of time. Someone who isn’t involved with the first “chunk” can easily be lost once they start getting involved, but brands can take steps to welcome newcomers to a conversation.

Now, there is a caveat. You don’t want to do so much handholding that the vets (those who know what’s going on because they’ve been connected to the brand for some time) feel like they aren’t welcome. Here are some basic things brands can do:

Use About Sections to Invite Conversation. Use Facebook’s, Twitter’s, YouTube’s and other social platform’s about sections to provide users with what they can expect from the brand and what the conversation surrounding the brand on the specific platform is all about. Too many brands use these sections to communicate boilerplate language about the founding of the company, number of employees or something else. Customers visiting social platforms already know the company. They’re ready to take the relationship to the next level by connecting socially. What they don’t know is the topic of conversation. Introduce them. Give them an idea of what kind of content they can expect and what you want them to do.

Introduce Your Brand. Platforms have about sections (and if you have a blog you can create one), but those only go so deep. Make that first impression a memorable one by offering content just for newcomers. This might be an introductory video on a YouTube channel titled “Watch This First,” a pinboard on Pinterest communicating everything someone should know about the brand or a tab on Facebook welcoming new members. Offer something compelling to make that first impression worthy of connecting again.

Incorporate Reminders. Don’t be afraid of using primary communication channels to communicate to newcomers. This might be an “In case you just ‘liked’ us…” Facebook post or a similar tweet. It could be links to your most popular blog content. Take the time to acknowledge the newcomers in your editorial calendars. Chances are you’ll remind the “vets” of content they missed or would at least enjoy being reminded of, too.

It’s important to remember that customer relationships are at different levels. Everyone’s different, so brands should think about how they can give customers, no matter what stage they’re in, the information they need.

More With Less

More Likers, followers, viewers, subscribers. So often the next bridge to cross to achieve success hinges on growing the number of consumers who have subscribed to receive a brand’s content. But this focus on a singular goal does two things. First, it means marketers will never view their efforts as successful because they’ll always want more. Second, and most importantly, it diverts our attention away from social media’s true value, engagement with consumers, not reaching mass numbers.

People Talking About

Facebook recently launched the People Talking About metric to Facebook Insights to allow Page admins to view the interactions taking place on a Page, such as Likes, Mentions, Shares, photo-tags and so on from one metric. Basically, it’s a good metric to look at if you want to see how well your brand is engaging with its Page Likers.

People Talking About was coupled with the launch of a Virality metric that takes the numbers of People Talking About divided by reach, which shows the level of engagement each piece of content is getting, allowing Page admins to see what content (e.g., questions, photos, videos, etc.) is driving interaction.

Engagement Makes Your Content Work

Marketers can only do so much with the content they produce. If no one is interacting with it, it’s not going to do anything for the brand. Consumer interaction with content powers it to be viewed by more people as it’s more likely to show up in more News Feeds, meaning Likers won’t be the only ones seeing a brand’s content. Their friends will to.

More With Less

When people interact with your content, your content shows up in more places than your own social media platform and to more people than those who follow/”Like”/subscribe to you. This means you can potentially reach more people by encouraging interaction than you ever could by just focusing on increasing the number of people who follow you.

This is true on a number of platforms: 

• Facebook - interaction with your Page increases the likelihood content will display in News Feeds across Facebook
• Twitter - Retweets and @replies allow your content to display in the Timelines of more than just your followers. When they interact, their followers are exposed to you, too.
• Videos, Photos, Blog Posts - Encouraging interaction gives users more reasons to share with their social graphs.

Growth in followers is important, but quality is key. It’s imperative to grow with the right people who will want to view your content, interact with it and share it with others. It will allow your brand to do a lot more with not as many followers. After all, that’s what makes social media marketing so powerful--the ability to deliver a message to one and watch it reach many.

Invest Today, Leverage Tomorrow

Social media doesn’t come with an on/off switch. Although, I wish it did sometimes. Still, all too often it’s treated as the magic ingredient to turn a good campaign into an incredible campaign. “Let’s add a social media component to this to encourage sharing and give this an element of ‘virality.’” Okay.

It’s really not that simple. Social media isn’t something that can be thrown in last minute to add another check mark to a list of campaign mandatories. 

Invest Today

Social media success is a process, and that process isn’t always a quick one. There’s a pay-to-play element that requires an initial investment to set the groundwork and accumulate the resources, so those resources can be utilized in the future.

The groundwork needs to be set. You need to accumulate the people (Facebook Likers, Twitter followers, blog subscribers, YouTube channel subscribers, etc.) before you can deliver a message and expect results. For example, if there’s a big product launch one week away, and you want to use Facebook to promote it, you’re not going to get very far if you didn’t have a Facebook Page in the first place. However, if you’ve been spending some time on Facebook and investing in the platform, which has led to a vibrant Facebook Page community, you have an audience to deliver your message to in hopes that they’ll pass it along.

Start laying the groundwork today, so you can act when you need to. Depending upon the platforms that are right for your brand and your audience, prioritize where you should focus and start staking your claim. Set-up a Facebook Page, claim your Foursquare locations, start looking at Twitter and so on.

You’re not going to see much of a return during the initial stages of establishing your social media presence. After all, you don’t have anyone engaging with you yet, but if you set your initial focus on that first phase being an investment, not a magic ingredient, you’ll lay the groundwork for what can lead to big success down the line.

Leverage Tomorrow

Social media success won’t happen overnight, but if you invest, you’ll have established relationships, loyal followers and brand advocates who trust you when it matters most. That way when a campaign launches you can leverage those assets to spread the word, participate in promotions and start movements that generate revenue.

Social Media’s Just Different

TV, radio, print, display and all other traditional advertising methods have built-in audiences. That’s part of what you pay for when you use these vehicles. A brand’s social media platforms, on the other hand, need to develop audiences from scratch. It’s a process worth investing in. Don’t try to turn it on when it’s too late for it to help you achieve business objectives.

Mobilize Advocates to Make the Sale

There’s been a lot of talk around social media ROI and proving success in the social space. This post isn’t about that, though. It’s about making the most out of your investment.

Engaging in the social space is a big investment of time, money and personnel resources. Much of that work goes toward gaining an audience of Facebook Likers, Twitter followers, YouTube subscribers, blog readers and so on. But instead of spinning your wheels to keep them engaged and interacting, how do you make that investment work for your brand?

Push the Button

With all of that investment in growing that following, it only makes sense to activate those who have already raised their hands to say they like your brand and what you’re all about. An eMarketer chart reveals that 55% of influencers like to be one of the first to know about a new product, and 56% of influencers find it fun to convince others to try new products. Not only do they like your brand, they probably like telling others about it.

Your followers (not just Twitter but anyone who follows your social activity) are your consumer ambassadors. Many probably share their passion for your brand without any prompting, but sometimes, you have to push the button, give permission and mobilize your followers to spread the word.

Give Permission and Mobilize

Alright, so it’s one thing to know the importance of pushing the button. It’s another thing to do it. There are several ways, but it ultimately comes down to making sharing easy. 

• Identify Your Advocates. Listen and identify the people who love your brand the most. They’re not just casual fans of your brand. These are people to keep close and potentially reward down the line. There are bonus points if they have a degree of influence (e.g., a significant following, content creation platform, etc.)
• Make Sharing Seamless. Giving people the ability to share has never been easier. With multiple options to embed on your website (e.g., “Like” button, tweet button, etc.), incorporating sharing capabilities in all aspects of your brand online makes sharing an easy, painless process.
• Reward and Ask. Your followers are your best friends, and friends do things for each other. Provide them with insider access whenever possible, say thanks with deals and offer rewards. Most importantly, don’t forget to ask if you’d like them to do something. If there’s a deal to share or an upcoming promotion, let your followers be the spark that lights the fire. Tell them about it, and give them the permission, tools and means to tell others. Some won't participate, but others will.
• Serve. Remember to serve your customers. Being in the social space comes with the expectation from consumers that you’re there to help and be responsive. Be consistent with your level of interaction, invite two-way dialogue and collaborate with your followers. We’re on the same level with them now, so make the most out of being so close.