social media

Is Social Media All About the Numbers?

Posted by Mike McLaughlin on Dec 17, 2010, in Thoughts , tagged with , , ,

As he took down a mole poblano chicken drumstick over lunch, I posed the following question to Anu:

If Twitter let us hide the number of people who follow Naissance, would you want to do it?

The genesis of the question was a social media project for a client and the discussions we’ve had around measuring the success of such efforts.  I thought about the Naissance Twitter account and LinkedIn profile, and that people encountering them probably:

  1. Focus immediately on the number of followers we have, and
  2. Make some sort of judgment based on that number

What if the 19 was 1,900?

At first I felt frustration.  Yes, we have 19 followers, but we’re a new company and have never made an explicit ask/push to get people to pay attention to our social media presence.  How dare anyone judge the Naissance book by its cover!  This “reasoning” led to my question for Anu.

Then, of course, I realized that people DO judge books by their covers.  At least in part.  That’s the real world.

So since social media “ROI” is a fantasy for most firms, the easiest proxy for how well social media efforts are going is the number of friends/followers you have.  And so the real world for social media means promotion is as important as content.  Maybe more. Getting people over the initial hurdle of engaging you is the first and most important challenge.

As unappealing as it may sound, being shamelessly self-promoting is probably a good idea.

Planning for Staffing: social media style

Posted by Anu Heda on Nov 22, 2010, in Thoughts , tagged with

Last week, I attended a great social media within financial services conference.  The conference brings professionals from all corners of financial services to discuss the how & why of social media.

What needs to be done to deliver a high-quality social media effort?

  1. Own the dialogue – educate, excite, and engage business lines to further their business goals with social media usage.
  2. Create and modify a process – write down each and every procedural act the firm will take with each social media tool used.
  3. Liaise continuously with Legal – start and maintain a business dialogue with legal that replaces yes/no questions with how-to questions.  That begins from a deep understanding of FINRA 10-06 (among other guidelines) and competitive intelligence.
  4. Create and refine metrics – understand internal evaluation process and map social media into those evaluation processes
  5. Set up and monitor social media – [we got to number 5 before actually using social media.] own the primary relationship with each social media tool (e.g. login/password for facebook) and monitor usage
  6. Build external usage – generate buzz outside the firm; nothing is sadder than a corporate Twitter account with 5 followers.
  7. Evaluate new social media tools – investigate and determine applicability with each new tool under the ever-growing social media umbrella.

There are more firm-specific initiatives necessary, but these seven seem applicable across firms.  Some firms think the work can be added to already-stretched-too-thin marketing teams; I’m dubious of that.  In my eyes, there is a need for at least one full-time person.

Why Naissance Isn’t on Facebook (For Now)

Posted by Mike McLaughlin on Sep 25, 2010, in Thoughts , tagged with , , ,

It’s somehow become generally accepted that every business needs a Facebook page.  So, in preparing for the Naissance launch, Googling for arguments why a company shouldn’t be on Facebook seemed like a fun exercise.

After 20 minutes I gave up.  I couldn’t find someone who says “here are 3 good reasons why your company doesn’t need to be on Facebook.”  And yet we arrived at that conclusion.  Here’s why:

  • We’re neither big nor retail. Coca Cola has hundreds of millions of customers, many of whom are actually on Facebook.  They need a page.  We’re a small company with a focused group of businesses as clients.  And from what I can tell, most of the people we meet with haven’t taken the Facebook plunge.
  • We know, already use, and prefer other tools. LinkedIn has become indispensible to us for business networking.  So we’re there (here and here).  Twitter is easy and has been fun for two years.  So we’re there, too.  But neither Anu nor I have found a reason to register for Facebook yet.
  • We need a better reason than “repetition”. We think a Facebook presence should bring something different to the table.  Something that people can’t get on a blog, a Web site, or via LinkedIn or Twitter.  Unfortunately, we don’t know what that should be for Naissance.  And judging by the pages of many companies, we’re not the only ones struggling for an answer.

We only have so many things to say.  And so contrary to the prevailing wisdom, we can live without a Facebook page for now.  We suspect many other companies can, too.