Recently every time I am pitching a social project the word “Facebook” comes up. Not surprising it is the social media tool of the year, until the next one comes along, and that site which is capturing the exact demographic most companies are looking for. It is “fun” or at least “more fun than Linkedin” as I am told.
The bonus is anyone with a budget can get a piece of the Facebook pie. In the genius of Facebook
they don’t have to do all the work and people still flock. I know people who showed up just to be on a certain app that they like to play. Cost to Facebook $0. Profit to Facebook, lots.
Of course not only can you promote your product through some widget, you can also make some cash if you have the right game set-up. It’s not easy and I haven’t seen any that are terribly profitable, but it can happen.
With that, here are 10 things about Facebook everyone should know:
1. A Facebook Application is not magical, it is like any other web application.
For that matter, web applications are not magical either. They are no different from a shopping cart or a filter on a datagrid. There is data, logic and display. The difference is in a Facebook Page, the display is fancy and the logic is something you would not normally do on a web page. You could easily take just about any mini-tool on your website and reconfigure it.
The main point of a Facebook app though is engagement in a vacuum, where on your website they are hunting and pecking for YOUR information. Your product catalog isn’t going to get anyone excited even though it is the same technology as “find a new friend based on 4 random letters.”
2. Facebook Applications can be programmed in any language
PHP is what Facebook’s own site is programmed, so the library you get as a developer comes in PHP. What this means is the script kiddies have a development advantage. However, as long as you use the FB API properly (and there is a library available for most any language) you can use whatever language you want. I do my Facebook apps in Coldfusion. I have seen them in .net, perl, even straight HTML/Javascript. If you can program you can probably program a Facebook App, it is just more syntax to learn. Which brings me to.
3. A Facebook application doesn’t need to “do” anything
A Facebook “Application” can be a single page. I have seen them as “I support” type pages, or an invite. Because when you add an application it tells your friends this can still be viral. It can still get word out to small circles well. No, it won’t be the next hot thing like Dogbook, but if you have a small local audience people will at least click and see what this application is. There is practically free advertising for hooking into the API. Really, there doesn’t have to be any “interaction” at all.
4. A Facebook Application can be as big or as small as you like.
You can create an entire virtual world in a Facebook application. It is hosted on your server, maintained by your people, so do with it what you want. Facebook development is as complicated as you make it. Most are three to five actions (buy, sell, invite, fight/compare, purchase) because those are small, addictive and easy to use. But you can create 70 action sites with their own sub-menus, economies, logins, etc. As much as you want to spend time and money you can make it that.
5. When Open Social gets rolling that Facebook Application can work other places with some tweaking
Google, of course, is leading the way and created Open Social. So far it hasn’t caught on, but it will. There are still some questions on security and so on but the idea is this, the App you created in Facebook will also use the Open Social API.
To un-tech that down a bit, if you are on Friendster and your buddy loves Hi5, you can still play the same game, and see their updates because OpenSocial talks to both networks at the same time. Now, Facebook has yet to sign onto Open Social because they have the lion’s share of the market, why should they? But the Open Social API will work a lot like the FBML language for Facebook, it won’t be a complete re-write to take that FB app and make it a myspace AND friendster AND Yahoo application.
6. Yes, you can display your logo on a Facebook Application
There is this rumor going around that you can’t brand your Facebook Application or have it link off Facebook. This is crap. What you can’t do on Facebook is use it as an adwords server, sell advertising to other companies, automatically link people to new pages, require downloads or “force” invite friends on install.
What you can do is, link to your site as an option, plaster your logo everywhere, suggest (and reward) invites of friends, say pretty much whatever you want and design it how you feel. Sure you can use it simply as a sales tool but that isn’t going to be popular. There should still be a fun “catch” some place.
7. Facebook Apps tell people’s friends when they are installed and used
This is really the biggest advantage of a Facebook Application. Jane Popular has 200 friends. When she installs your Application it gets listed as an update for her. The next time her 200 friends log on they see Jane installed your new toy. They get curious and some of them install it too, then their friends see the same message and so on.
Even better if Jane Popular likes your game, tracker, whatever, you can put an update on her newsfeed that a new level was reached, a trivia contest was passed a survey was taken, whatever (you can update a person’s profile 5 times a day as they use your product), that also is an alert friends see.
Plus, you get your own little ad space on their profile of their current rank, setting, whatever. Your application advertises itself in a big way.
8. Facebook shares user information with you
When someone installs a Facebook application they essentially login. Now, some information you don’t get, like direct email addresses, but some you do, like their city, zip code, political preference, and very important groups they are in and their friends list.
Whatever information they filled in you can get (and save to your own database!) Now, they get to choose if you ever get to send them email, or update their home page but most people let you do as you want and leave all the boxes checked when they install. You can base your logic off this, pre-set information for them or just horde it for yourself.
You can email them using the Facebook language so you don’t get direct emails but can still communicate to their inbox outside of Facebook. This is great for “remind me” applications.
Touching on that friends list a bit, you know how whenever you sell something you say “tell your friends” Well, that is a built in function to Facebook apps. You can highly encourage it. i.e. see advanced results after you invite 10 friends” or “double your play cash with each friend that signs up.” It is like networking gold!
9. Facebook Applications are at a premium but they shouldn’t be
On freelance job boards now I see e-commerce sites and web design going for half or less what it should on the open market. Yet, Facebook applications are “at price” which means they are a bit of a premium. I could sell a 5 page Facebook application for twice, or more what I sell an equally hard five page website for.
This premium is artificial because, remember all a Facebook application contains is the same programming your website can have (it is even on YOUR website). When that programmer says scary things like “FBML” and “Facebook talk-back” scoff and say if they have that hard a time learning it they might not be right for you anyway.
The premium is there because most people don’t realize how easy and simple some of these smaller applications are, and because they aren’t templated like a blog or a three column home page layout. There is still an illusion of expertise because Facebook applications are less than a year old and most marketing and PR firms are just now looking into how to use them.
10. Having a Facebook Application is not unlike any other “viral” tool
Most important, just like any other “viral ” tool, having a Facebook Application does not mean it will be successful. It can still suck, and no one will use it. Now, it can get a little help, and there is networking automatically in place, but really, if it is just your business card it won’t get talked about and spread. There should be a good idea behind it, there should be a cause, reason or fun item to do, otherwise, start a group Those are also advertised on update and profile pages, and FAR easier to do).
It is no different than putting a video on Youtube, it doesn’t mean anyone will see it unless it is entertaining in some way.
Hopefully this took some of the mystery and wonder out of Facebook Applications. Now, go think of that cool idea, diagram it and go make yourself popular.
Long, long ago in the annals of time, like, oh 2004 or so, the female was a rare thing on the internet. Chat rooms, forums, blogs, probably had a 4:1 ratio of men to women. It came from the industry itself, the geekette was rare in the server room, and web staffs were usually sausage parties. Boys did tech, girls did marketing, that is just how it was.
And so, an entire generation of websites grew up catered more to men than women. Fark.com, collegehumor.com, homestarrunner.com, most of the popular share and watch sites were very male orientated. Oxygen.com went kaput fast, iVillage.com pretty much a bust.
It isn’t that people weren’t trying, there was a line back in the day for “women based sites.” But when the most popular non-mainstream news site is slashdot, which is around 80% male, it is an uphill battle. WebMd survived its softer side approach, and they were the exception.
Behold! The days of real social networking, friendly and easy to use, where you can chat real time, and alert friends. Dare I say it, virtually gossip about photos and relationships. Yes, it is a stereotype, but so is fart jokes and car crashes which the last generation was built on.
Milissa Rick of Spark Effect quotes a couple of demographic studies showing that when it comes to social media, it is a girl’s world. Back in March the London Times (by way of Mashable) reported that girls have larger social network numbers than boys. Across the board, age group to age group women are on the social networks, blogging, chatting more than men, about 10% more. This was confirmed again in the adage article on social media personality types. 10-12, 13-15, 20-30, 40-50… all the same gap, About 10% more women than men on social media sites, blogging, sharing.
I’ll let you create your own stereotype on “why” for now, what I want to focus on is “so?”
That “so what” is what drives any good site or idea when they hear a statistic. If there are more women than men, pretty much regardless of age, on the social media train, then you probably should gear your content to match that. Now maybe men are still on the above mentioned sites (none of which are going broke) and social media is just the new realm of women, but I think it is more. Yes, there are bored housewives and teenage girls looking to connect, why would there be fewer of them than men? But why more?
If you own a social networking platform, figure it out because it is going to be the key to your success. I am not saying pink layouts and flowers on every Bebo-clone home page but that the old mindset of men-on-the-net-because-they-are-geeks is dead.
You design and develop for your demographic and that is slanting 10% more female now than male these days (and growing). There certainly is a different usability, language tone, palette, application when you put things under that light. Stereotype or not there is a reason the same damn razor is marketed to women different than men (black background, really?). You have to keep in mind that if you have a social product, without an inherent gender bias (i.e. motor oil social blog) the majority of your users will be female.
That said, if there is one thing that has been true since the dawn of time, proven at every ale house, coffee shop, home economics class and dating site of all time is that where there are more women than men, men will show up. Usually drunk and being loud and rude. There, my stereotypes are even.
I keep reading about the death of Facebook. How people are sick of it, how people are tired of it, how people aren’t going to use it for applications. And yet, every company I know is looking to make an app, people who weren’t on Facebook a week ago are addicted now. Hell, Myspace is already not meeting projections and may be considered a drag on News Corp.
It is hard to remember that as social media early adapters we are onto the next big thing while the real big thing may still be getting hot. I am sure in six months we will be reading about how Twitter is all player out and some new gizmo is so much the rage. And then all my friends will finally get Twitter accounts, and four years after that my mom will want to know how you direct message.
I am not at all worried since the real power of social media is never going away now that we have it. Because social media is about friends, social networking is about talking to people.We are social, this is just a new medium. We always want to tell people what we think, I get twitter reviews of a restaurant during dinner, updates on shows in message boards as the live broadcast happens, you think that is going away? The tools may change just as we went from horse to car to plane, but we are still always on the move.
And if you are planning a new social media launch, David Alston, by way of Lee Odden talks about ten things to watch when launching a site. I think some of the tips are a bit… well if you are getting so much traffic you can watch that many people talk about that many items, then things are pretty good.
Sometimes marketing smells great, like fresh flowers, or bacon, or other good-smelly things. Sometimes it smells like, well you know what bad things smell like, pick one.
In this rash world of Web 2.0 where we decide and Twitter on something within minutes of learning about it, sometimes it is nice to see that sometimes things move slow when we aren’t paying attention.
For example, iPhone is being launched in Australia and 10 other nations, bot quite yet but it is planned. That is right, a phone so hip it has been copied by three other companies in various formats is finally making it to the small, island nation of Australia.
The Wall Street Journal reports today that commercials for the 2009 Super Bowl (early prediction: Falcons and Raiders) will cost three million dollars each 30 second spot. That is right, in the time it took for you to figure out if I was serious on my Super Bowl prediction some dot com your mom never heard of will have dropped 3 million dollars, plus production, plus planning to make a semi-funny ad.
I always look at that number and think “do you know what i could do with a 3 million dollar budget.” Really, that is some amazing stuff to build there. World class, with a two year budget. Sometimes it feels like companies move slow because they always moved slow. I am sure what-ever-it-is.com with a 3 million dollar two year budget could bring in 100 million visitors in that time.
What this leads me to is that sometimes, even if you specialize in social media and what that hot new whatnot is, you need to slow down and let people catch up. An article in Ad Age recently broke down nine types of user personalities and how each of them uses new technology. There are some surprising results.
Key quote:
While marketers may not be spending huge marketing dollars on social media yet, they know they should be using it to reach consumers. Coremetrics’ “Face of the New Marketer” study found that 78% of marketers see social media as a way to gain a competitive edge, but fewer than 8% have budgets devoted to it.
Oh but it is coming… that 8% will be 40% this time next year. You may want to be on the Mayflower and not the 100th ship after. Much like the movie Armageddon things are sometimes only cool the first time you see them. If you start now, even a small project, even a taste of what you want you can gain experience and learning you will need. It is a lot cheaper now than when the market is saturated and glossy and shiny.
And by the way I gave you the team, I am not giving you the Super Bowl winner, that is just silly guessing.
More and more I am having conversations with people, usually agency managers on how they are thinking about ramping up social media. Sure, the agenngies do a fair amount of SEO (which has somehow now become part of the Web 2.0 experience?!?!) but, most companies haven’t taken a serious look at social media.
Even marketing groups, branding agencies haven’t made this leap. Most are still on”old web” and interactive. “Let us re-do your site” and “we can re-do your e-commerce.” As far as getting viral (the real kind, not the kind where you put something on Youtube and hope people find it) almost everyone is ignoring social media.
What I am hearing from agencies are two things. First, that they aren’t equipped for social media strategy. They don’t know Twitter from a hole and they don’t know what else there is besides “buy ads on myspace” (not a social strategy BTW).
Secondly, and this is most important, the agencies don’t think their clients are asking for it. This stuck me as odd because in my part of the world everyone is launching or asking to launch social something. It is seen as a minimal investment with big upside. Drop 40 grand, and if it doesn’t work, eh, not a huge deal, you got to say you did something cool. If it does work, you are the genius of the market department who found a new way to save the world.
I wasn’t sure if I was just talking to companies who had a leading edge bend to them, or if the market really was asking for more than agencies think they are.
The best way for me to tell what the online free market is doing is to look at the demand on Google. I spent some time playing with keyword estimators and traffic projections. What I found was consistent so I will only show one set of results. You can see what type of phrases I used.
As you can see, there isn’t incredible demand, but there is some key demand from people looking for social media ideas. I’ll point out in the cases where there is data, more people are searching than there are people advertising for it. Sure, the searching in just March was weak enough Google couldn’t put whatever ranking on it (not entirely sure what that threshold is) but within the year people have been searching for these phrases.
The two terms that surprise me most are “social media press release” and “social media agency.” These two terms are obviously client/company driven, looking for social media experts. They aren’t finding them in the person-to-person networking world so they are actually searching online for those social media strategy experts.
Based on this quick set of results, the companies probably still aren’t finding the social media specialists they are looking for. No one is advertising themselves (using adwords at least) as a social media agency.
Ladies and Gentleman, when companies are looking for an expertise and no one is offering that expertise you have a market opportunity. Right now you can get in a bit of a ground floor doing just social media interactive work, after you convince you know your game, and have a market more-or-less to yourself. I can’t say it is the “next big thing” but there is certainly a itch market. Focusing on Twitter, facebook application, profile development, social SEO, Open Social, etc… you have something.
Yes, there are lots of tools, and programmers who kind of dabble. There are houses who will take a shot, but not a lot of places advertising “this is what we do and all we do” when it comes to social media.
And yet, there are obviously companies, potential clients, looking for that expertise. Anyone want to open a shop? Recent layoffs and disgruntled workers in Milwaukee means I can have an entire department starting Monday. So, if you have a six figure slush fund laying around, lemme know (how is that for a pitch? Think it will work?)
Yesterday around noon I got a tweet from @MichelleBB that @Zappos was holding a content. At the end of the day @Zappos (Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh) was going to pick one person following him to win a free pair of shoes. A couple hours later he also said he’d give a free pair of shoes to upto 10 followers of that winner who are also following.
A pair of shoes for Zappos is no big deal for sure. So this was a goodwill investment for Tony. As soon as I got the announcement (and followed!) I saw that his following count was a little over 200.
Three hours later as the word filtered through the internet his followed counted over 400. By the time he gave the shoes away to @rotkapchen there were over 1000 followers.
This morning the followers were back down to 966 but Tony will show those early leavers. He just a couple minutes ago announced:
I want to meet more customers. On Monday, I will select a random @zappos follower for free trip for 2 to Vegas for office tour & lunch w/ me
I really think this this twitter strategy is brilliant. Sure the plane tickets are a cost but he could have done this shoes give away could have been once a week and he would have thousands of people following.
What that really means is thousands of technophiles, glued to their computers most of the day listening to any “commercial” he has about a new feature, or a sale or anything. His cost a few hundred dollars a week.
If you have a e-commerce site and can afford a hundred bucks a week you too can harness some Twitter power and get a, fairly-rabid following in this form of simple, easy contests. Free baseball cards, I am there. Travel voucher, there. Magazine subscription, there. Free books, there… you get the idea. I am willing to read a couple of “commercial” twitters a week from someone for the random win once a year. Costs me nothing.
Costs the “advertiser” almost nothing and gets new customers, branding and messaging in front of people who would have ignored you and all the extra benefits of the buzz. Ignore @zappos has already one-upped the stakes with a trip to Vegas, this will become the next big thing on Twitter. Someone grab twitterdeals.com
Plus, hey, I could use a trip to Vegas, I have a ten year anniversary coming up with my wife.
I don’t know if other parts of the US have this but in the midwest we get these odd spring rain storms. One minute sunny and nice the next just a monsoon on your lawn, five minutes later sunny again. No drizzle or warning just thick, fat rain to soak you to the bone or sunny happiness.
Today my wife decided to walk to school and pick up my youngest. Five minutes after she left there was one of those random rain storms, and I hope she missed it. Then sun for 10 minutes then rain again for five. I can imagine her running with a 4 year old in one arm and his scooter in the other during the walk home.
While I watched this from my office window I realized this is a lot like almost all social media programs. You tend to not have a lot of “sort of viral” or “kind of a big hit” it tends to be either feast or famine. Now of course there are levels of “viral” and what your goals are can still be met with lower levels, but when something fails it falls flat and when it succeeds you look like a champ and then some.
Setting those client expectations, that each social program, each marketing idea, just because and especially if it looks like the last big success, is key. I could give you two failed programs for each good one you mention, and those failed ones might have been better but something was wrong.
A few tips on keeping those client expectations clear:
Remind them that there are failures
Show them some, say “do you remember…” no of course not, it failed, someone spent a fair amunt of money and it crashed. Every time they bring up that such and such went gold with almost no budget have a reminder they are the exception more than the rule (especially for no budget).
Take their examples of wins and tell them why it worked
Sometimes this can be a bit critical of what they are doing. Their example may have been funny, or had a huge PR campaign you didn’t see, or was the first on the block, or was edited well. A $10,000 campaign budget isn’t generally going to perform like one that was $100,000. Keeping these ROI expectations when they are focused on the far end of the bell curve is very important.
Set high and low goals
You need to set the expectation of “here is worst case” so they know you were thinking of it as this campaign was created. “we might only get 5,000 people to go to the site in 3 months… it might not catch on.” While optimism is fine, ignorance that everything you touch is first-rate just doesn’t work in social media. On the high side, be realistic, that way you can still exceed expectations.
Remind of the long-tail
Not everything is an overnight success. Just like when you show up to see a hot video on youtube you are already the 108,238th person to see it. That video has probably been up for months and until some morning show in Houston mentioned it it was sitting on 10,000 views and a couple mentions on Digg. That is the nature of viral, it can sit around and then blow up huge to be in everyone’s inbox by noon. Unless you have a huge initial push budget don’t expect a big gig day one. Sure, you can bump day one but it might not sustain. Obviously this gets into getting something viral into the hands of the right people but that is a different post.
Have an exit strategy
If you are three months and 60% of your budget in, how are you going to cut bait? You can still save the brand by putting the money into something more secure. Just like a falling stock can be bought out and put into a CD you know has less upside but isn’t going anywhere. Before you start the campaign you should have dropdead metrics and dates in mind.
Let the client know that if things fail they won’t blow their entire budget on a loser, there is still a plan C.
Know how to tweak
Any good social plan has tweak points. If it is a blog, posting more or less or using different language or attitude. Know your tweak points, know the cost to tweak and DO tweak. People are not commenting, figure out why and encourage it.
The client knowing this is going to happen is like knowing your baby sitter will check in on the kids after they are asleep and not just watch cable.
Plan on deconstructing
Did it work or not? Either way it was probably a fine detail that made the difference either way. A catch phrase, wasn’t funny, was funny but to the wrong audience, whatever. Because you are going to need to talk about it, you have to watch it. You know it, they know it, it helps.
Report and expand regularly
Sometimes campaigns start strong and fall off. Others they start slow but show signs of life. Report these, predict, and say why. “downloads are slow now but in the reffer logs we just got a hit from a major blogger, so hopefully that picks things up.” or “we really fell off after that first email newsletter, it didn’t seem to get passed on and we need to watch when to call it dead.”
Most importantly, setting expectations up front is the most important part of any social media campaign. We all know the upside of a real winner, we need to remember that not everyone bats 1.000 (heard from jib-jab lately?), anticipate big upside, don’t let the client expect it.
A couple weeks ago someone sent me a youtube video declaring it “either the best or worst band, ever.” The video was While Gold singing One Gallon Axe. I noticed quickly that I had never heard of this band (not odd at all) it was, while silly, well made (a little odd) and had a lot of hits (not too out of the water).
The video is indeed silly, and pure self-aware sarcasm of metal/rock. Plus it has the line “rock the world’s face” which is classic.
Today I found whitegold.com the official website for the band. And it is cool. THe pre-loader is even great, goes up to 11 and makes the static louder. Then you have interactive videos, while the video goes on (and it does take forever to load) you can pick up move and click on things and stuff happens. It allows you to unlock other videos.
The site and music is really entertaining and cool.
Here is the best part, it is all an ad campaign. California dairy board (obvious now after you know it) created this persona and campaign. I love that you have no idea except for a small copyright in the corner and if you are paying attention.
I love how daring it is that they spent all this money for a campaign, and never even put a tagline or logo at the youtube released video, they don’t splash it around or even present it in the site. They took a “this better work or go bust” approach to the viral nature of the ads.
Good afternoon,
I attached this camera to the bench so you could take pictures. Seriously. So have fun. I’ll be back later this evening to pick it up.
Love, Jay / The Plug
He posted the resulting photos on his site. Great idea and an even better reminder that social media doesn’t have to be online. This could be a huge idea for a brand (especially with a digital camera and a watermark) though I am guessing you need a uhhh editor if it is in a bar or something.
You are out, having a good time, grab the camera on the wall, point, click take Tommy’s photo and remember the URL. Next day (or so) go check it out. Send it to friends, branded, talked about, passed on.
Reem Abeidoh has a fun little article on the five levels of friends on social networks. I think it was a tongue-in-cheek joke but I think he actually nailed the concept of friend-levels which I have been spending a lot of time thinking about very well.
There are, just like the “real world” these trust circles. When it comes to marketing and branding only your inner-most circles, or people with an expertise in an area get a second listen; anyone else they might as well be a corporate shill.
The problem with marketing and branding in this Social Wild West is that word of mouth has to be credible. Sometimes it doesn’t take a lot of credibility (hey watch this it is funny!) and other times it does (buy this brand of car). Defining these levels, and then creating strategies around each level is key to anyone doing social media strategy. Of course the next step is defining and measuring the results. The larger and more “loose” the circle the harder it will be for any one person, or fact to influence them. Of course those larger circles is exactly where the money is. You do a lot better convincing 20 people in the time you take to convince one, obviously. The question we have, and setting up “friendship levels” helps start the conversation is, are you better talking to 20 “iBestFriends” or 300 “buddys?”
Technorati Tags: facebook, Open Social, social networking
Follow me on Twitter