Social Media

For some time, it’s been argued that the social network every business should be tapping into is Facebook, but is this really the case?

Social Media Examiner states that “with 500 million people on Facebook, chances are more of your customers are active on Facebook than any other network.” Aliza Sherman of GigaOM claims that in terms of advertising, “there’s no question that Facebook wins.”

It all appears so clean-cut, and it’s interesting reading when you get into the reasoning behind their championing of Zuckerberg’s platform. The ease of viral promotion, the size of the existing community, and the way in which Facebook constantly pulls users in towards it because it’s so central to modern social communication.

However, a recent study by Three_D, the social media arm of PR company Threepipe Communications, has revealed that 65 companies on the FTSE 100 use Twitter instead of Facebook. While they may only represent sixty-five companies out of countless millions across the globe, a majority vote for the small blue bird from a hundred of the most successful companies in the UK is a significant statistic.

Twitter is no longer the novel concept it was in 2006. It now has over 300 million accounts – a growth of 60 million a year. This stands in comparison to Facebook’s 500 million accounts, accumulated since 2004, a growth of 71 million. The difference isn’t all that great, relatively speaking, and the immediate accessibility of the Twitter platform means it takes minutes to set up a company account, rather than the longer period required to adequately establish a Facebook fan page.

Sherman concedes similar points within her article, and her differentiation between the two platforms is key to understanding what some businesses prioritising their Facebook presence are missing: the reasons consumers connect to your company. “The way you accumulate page fans on Facebook and followers on Twitter is different,” states Sherman. “You might gain a fan on Facebook just because someone sees someone they know becoming your fan. You gain followers on Twitter — genuine and engaged followers — because they actually want to hear what you have to say.”

Twitter is a feed of information that the user selects themselves, rather than another group affiliation or sign of consumer appreciation to be hung on the Wall of a Facebook user. Businesses are no longer seeking those who are willing to give them no more than a nod of approval; they want people to connect with the company out of personal interest.

It’s also not surprising to learn that potential customers are leaving Facebook along with the companies now devoting themselves to the 140-character marketing effort. The New York Times suggests that there are several factors at work driving people away from the social networking site, amongst them the overlapping of personal and business relationships, and the “inevitable” Orwellian undertones of Facebook’s aspirations to usurp Google as the central hub of today’s online society.

Twitter certainly seems like the better option, at least from my own perspective. There’s a sole purpose to a Twitter account – to tweet i.e. to communicate. There’s little else to do, nothing in fact, if you discard personalising your display picture, your small bio or your website link. It’s a streamlined experience that separates itself from the Facebook morass of Mafia Wars, Wall comments, privacy paranoia, and the endless struggle for the consumer’s “like” click. Perhaps the pro-Twitter trend will extend beyond the FTSE 100 in future. If the New York Times’ exodus analysis is anything to go by, it’s almost certain.

Today, I was reading through the usual batch of SEO, social media and small business news when I happened across a rather intriguing response on SEOmoz to the allegation that hiring a social media expert was a waste of time. Both the unintentional instigator of the debate and the individual who responded had a number of valid points. The instigator, one Peter Shankman, claimed that claiming someone was a ‘social media expert’ was akin to claiming they were able to remove bread from the fridge, but minus the ability to actually make the sandwich.

The individual refuting the statements made by Shankman was Rand Fishkin, SEOmoz CEO and co-founder. Interestingly, he went to the length of creating a chart detailing the expertise of social media specialists (a far more legitimate term, in my opinion), which I’ll post here for you (all credit goes to him, of course):

As you may be able to tell, it’s fairly comprehensive. However, I’ve got a few issues with his categorisation of certain slices of ‘web-knowledge,’ especially given that some of the skills he categorises as advanced are actually what he states social media expertise is not – ‘common sense.’ I believe in offering somebody the best service they can get, and I think it’s important to analyse his competent summary, given that the few flaws within it do point to an overall problem with the image of the ‘social media guru.’

First of all, the basic and intermediate skills are literally common sense, and are actions that people perform in their daily lives – people who don’t touch social media professionally. Shortening tweets, Google Analytics, Wikipedia, competitions with few requirements to enter – this isn’t anything new, and contesting that this is somehow specific to social media is awkward, especially given that some of it has nothing to do with social media. SEO, I can understand, but to purport something as vague as someone’s display picture as relevant solely to that sphere of expertise is a flawed argument, at best.

It’s all about what you’re willing to classify yourself as. No web expert wants to be a Jack-of-all-trades, and this is because you’re not actually seen as skilled at anything, only competent. But herding in a bunch of skills from disciplines separate to your own highlights that ‘competent’ characterisation of social media experts.

By no means am I contesting the relevance of social media experts – if I myself ran a company that worked with SEO, or even any business entity with an online presence, there’d be a full-time social media specialist on staff, because to ignore the importance of social media to marketing is ludicrous. However, the first commenter on Fishkin’s article made the most valid point of all: that most ‘experts’ on the web are usually self-proclaimed as such. ‘Ninjas’ is a personal pet peeve. You are not a ninja. Ninjas assassinate people and live by a code of honour. You actively seek to make friends, and employ no code of honour whatsoever, given that the most common phrase you’ll utter within any given online situation is ‘follow me and I’ll follow you back!’

Fishkin sells his expertise well – the advanced skills are really something to consider, but I feel he sells himself short by including basic knowledge in that chart. When defending any discipline, it is paramount that you state only what separates you from all the would-be experts, because giving the ‘common sense’ qualifications for the title in addition will inextricably mesh your field of expertise with theirs and make that distinction infinitely more difficult.

He then reveals his master-stroke; that Shankman himself is listed as a social media consultant in a featured listing on InvestinSocial. Priceless, and proof that if there’s one group of people you shouldn’t criticise unfairly on the web, it’s the people who’ve made it their stomping ground. Nothing is hidden, everything’s fair game. Now, where is my ‘social media ninja-pirate-alien-robot’ badge?

I don’t think there’s anyone sane out there who’s not been at least slightly shaken by what’s going on in Japan right now. Nuclear power stations at risk of meltdown, 17,000 dead or missing after the tsunami caused by the 8.9 earthquake that started this horrendous series of events, and countless more disturbing facts and figures that don’t seem to be coming to an end any time soon.

The problem has been, like all major disasters, covered by the global media, though, due to very vague and slippery reports on how bad the situation actually is emanating from the Japanese government, the coverage varies. However, some people are getting their stories straight, and if there’s one thing that has kept me on top of the reality of the situation in the Land of the Rising Sun, it’s Twitter.

In fact, specifically, it’s one person who goes by the username @mikecane. He tweeted humorously at me during my discussion with author Adam Christopher about vanity publishing, and his display picture – the paranoid and politically insightful Rorschach, from Watchmen – drew me in. I then found that he was a veritable goldmine of unbiased, hard-hitting Japan coverage, even though it clearly wasn’t his day-job. I was getting more interesting and shocking reports from his feed than the BBC ever gave me after work, and I was grateful.

Now, don’t get me wrong – I know very well that those wading into the power plant are more brave and committed than we will ever be, but that’s not the point. The fact that someone is willing to go out of their way to catalogue everything and provide scathing, honest commentary and ask the hard questions, then share that with the world, is beyond journalism, most especially without a wage slip at the end of the month - it’s a commitment to an idea, specifically that this stuff is important and there’s a bigger picture at work, here.

It’s great that journalists in Japan are working damn hard around the clock to bring me news, but it’s all from one source, and if you’ve got a smidgen of anti-monopolistic thoughts rattling around in your brain you’ll know that listening to the Sky News filter is an extremely silly thing to do when you want to build up a picture of the event. So I’m going to stick with my social feed and, as a result, see the photos the BBC won’t show me, and the statistics and reports that Sky News (in the UK at least) are reluctant to throw my way. It’s horrific, and heartbreaking, and I don’t want it filtered. Thanks, @mikecane, and thanks, Twitter.

I’ll be honest, had it been April 1st, I might have dismissed this news as a joke, but it’s mid-March and it’s not only a very smart approach to communication, but a forward-thinking one, too. This year, for the first time in UK history, a solicitor has issued a court summons via Facebook.

No, seriously.

Debtors, as you can well imagine, are probably slightly reluctant to delve into the legal morass of court visits and other inconveniences that come with owing people a significant amount of money. However, this also means you’re not likely to find them responding to any letters or phone-calls. However, upon proving to Hastings County Court in Essex that the slippery individual was a bit of a Facebook user, solicitor Hilary Thorpe was allowed to jump on the site and put the fear of Zuckerberg in them.

Away went the summons, and assumably they’ve either now responded or are considering finding another, similar social network with their mates on (yeah, good luck with that one). It was a tactic that was used once before in a similar cause Down Under, and that particular Australian couple found their legally binding documents served to them via the social networking site.

If anything, it proves that there really are no limits to the uses of Facebook and Twitter. Yesterday, author Adam Christopher found that using Twitter to befriend publisher Angry Robot resulted in them offering him his dream career, after many years of effort. Social media is no longer a distraction from your career, but a tool you can use to take it even further. Not to mention that if your legal career is being impeded by someone’s unresponsive nature, you can start tracking them down via their status updates.

It’ll be interesting to see what other landmarks social media sees in 2011, though don’t be surprised if people start conducting lectures or broadcasting them through Twitter. I recently saw the novel idea of tweeting a live surgery, demonstrated by the cast of Grey’s Anatomy. Other doctor’s joined in, offered suggestions and even a loan of their medical equipment during an operation that wasn’t going well. There are so many possibilities that it encourages those who’ve not joined in to join in, or so I’d like to think.

Even if you’re not going to use Twitter to talk, it might not be a bad idea to just use it to listen, considering it’s none too interested in your real name. Think of it as an RSS Reader that’s evolved into something else entirely. Social media is rapidly becoming the preferred method of communication, conducting business and even bringing lawbreakers to justice. The first two uses are pretty great. The third one is just downright cool. Now all Judge Dredd needs is a login and he’s good to go.

So, it’s been another week, and there’s been some good news. Stephanie used her Facebook profile to get the link out to what must’ve been a considerable amount of people in her network, and within 24 hours 100 votes had been granted to their ongoing attempt to win a honeymoon for themselves. This was impressive, but as of today they’re now at 550 votes on the dot, and this places them behind two kinds of people, all of them having taken the first, second and third spots on the leaderboard: the Where’d You Come From, and the Please Stop Winning.

The latter is fairly self-explanatory, but the former is basically someone who plants their video, and gets a boost to a winning position in a short period of time. Hopefully, that’s just an initial rush, but if it keeps going at that pace there’s no telling where it will end. They’ve still got just over half a month to go, so it’s time to start thinking beyond simple promotion and asking favours, and start talking to people who can really make this happen.

The ideal people would be those who write their tweets and Facebook status updates under the enormous weight of thousand followers and friends eagerly awaiting the next TwitPic link or mention of their daily activities. These people are extremely powerful entities in an online capacity, and have more than enough potential to help push Jason and Stephanie’s campaign as far as it needs to go. In terms of the mathematics behind all of this, here’s what I’ve worked out so far:

• The competition’s been running for about two months, thus far.
• The top videos are all sitting at around 700 votes, which means they’ve pulled in about 100 votes a week.
• This means that in two weeks, at 550 votes in total, we have to generate at least 300 votes a week to win.

…Yeah. Not the easiest task, mind you, but one I’m going to have to push for with everything I have that facilitates that pushing. Stephanie’s Facebook votes kept them in the game. Now it’s a case of finding people with the right reach on Twitter and Facebook, even on forums. Not entirely sure who those people are, but I’ll be damned if I don’t find them.

Okay, so, this could be going better.

It’s week four of the campaign (no update last week due to the huge interview with Michael Chorost which resulted in four posts over the regular three), and Jason’s video is just out of qualifying for a holiday by sitting in fourth place. However, this is not the end of the world, as an interesting opportunity is arising.

With three and a bit weeks to go before the competition ends, there are two videos each with just over 500 votes taking first and second place. However, there is also a video in third that only has 400 votes. Jason has around 370. The gap has closed once again, and if we can take it now, we’re fine. The main strategy would be to get to 1,000 votes, so far in the lead that it’s tough to usurp him, let alone have him finish outside the winning trio of happy honeymoon couples.

A lot of tactics have been discussed, and unfortunately it’s come to light that due to the lack of any campaigns on behalf of some of the other videos, we may be competing against people that are either manufacturing votes, or simply using their Facebook and a rather unique community angle. The angle is simply a stronger sense of community than ours – namely, that two of the top three video posters are devout and active members of the American Christian community, and out of them and Jason and my journalist circle, we’d wager the former are more likely to go the distance for someone who has their respect. This, in itself, is really quite sweet and I wish I had this behind me, but I don’t, because I’m not introducing God to universities campuses across the American Northwest.

But how do you manufacture that kind of popularity? Jason’s Facebook and Twitter have been ablaze with requests for votes, and I’ve done a fair bit of work with Twuffer and the MoreDigital Twitter, in addition to my own and retweeting his. The hash-tagging does help, but do hash-tags sometimes make it seem a tad less inviting, and more like spam? I’m not sure. But I will have to approach the people I know who have the pull to really draw some attention to this, and ensure that he stays in the running.

It’s not about the fact that the blog’s been following this, because if we didn’t succeed, I’ll write about what we may have done wrong, what we did right, and I’ll still have a blogpost. But this is also Jason’s honeymoon, something that won’t happen again in his or his fiancée’s lives. We need to crush the opposition, and I only have to say it once:

Battle stations.

I’ve found, after having delved into Twitter non-stop for quite a long time in a professional capacity, that some people are just plain annoying whenever it comes to microblogging. I’m not just talking about the irksome person who tells you about how good their sandwich was (that complaint is so 2009), but people who actually take advantage of hash-tags and endless Twitter tricks to drive you up the wall. Here’s several I personally find put me off reading someone’s feed ever again:

1. Excessive #ff high-fives. I’m serious, I don’t care if fifty people helped build you a house this week. Unless that’s a list of people who were tweeting to help find people homes during the Christchurch quake incident, which someone on my feed is actually currently doing, you’re going to drive people nuts. Choose one person, and promote them to others. Not twenty-eight. It becomes less personal, and the idea of following these non-personal people then becomes less appealing to your followers.

2. Endless links. Promote, promote, promote. This is good. But also accept the likelihood that if you’ve got two accounts – one for work and promo and one for just socialising and documenting your life outside work, then never mix the two. People who log onto @jimatwork and promote, then do the same two minutes later on @jimnotatwork, don’t seem to realise that people are following both accounts a lot of the time, and get both tweets, then wonder why you have two accounts in the first place.

3. Arrogance. No. You did not invent the wheel. You wrote an awesome post, or drew a fantastic picture, but don’t over-sell it. Offer your content to bored or relevant readers, offer to improve their day a little, but “hey guys check out this blog post its gonna change ur life [link] #wicked”, or something similarly hyperbolic, puts you on my blacklist, and will do for most people.

4. Quotes. I cannot express how irksome it is when 90% of someone’s tweets are a quote of some famous writer, politician, or philosopher. Other people on your Twitter feed are not doing this. So, to use a quote: “do unto others as they would do unto you”. No, I don’t know the exact page number, but I’ll say this much – I’m pretty sure if I uttered endless recycled, semi-relevant garbage without ever contributing to the debate myself, I’d sound like a motivational calendar.

So there you have it. Four small tips, and I hope more than anything that some of the people I’ve seen on Twitter take that to heart, before it begins to sound like a verbal apocalypse.

I’ve seen some really interesting variations on the idea of crowd-sourcing information, lately. The first was at Chuck Wendig’s blog, where he speaks about his attempt to find out just how many chilli con carne recipes exist in the Twitterverse, simply by using the microblogging network, and then blogging about the responses he had. The responses were varied, and of course almost every possible variation on the idea, from recipes incorporating beef, to lime juice, to black coffee were suggested. Seriously, I’m not joking. Black coffee. In fact, I think that was Chuck himself.

It’s a stimulating idea, and it shows that someone with reach on Twitter (Chuck’s blog and Twitter do very well, and he’s seen as one of the best blogging authors around by a considerable amount of people, including myself), can do with just 140 characters’ worth of space and a question. Chuck refers to his followers in this instance as a “human Google”, and he’s right – ask people about the things they put up on the web anyway, and they’re likely to tell you. Succinctly too, given the 140-character limit and multiple linked tweets being a little harder to read and write. But would it work on a corporate scale?

Yes, of course it would, and the people taking advantage (intelligently, in my opinion) of this are Twitter developers themselves – the second example of novel crowd-sourcing. Translating Twitter into as many languages as possible is an extremely time-consuming task – think about the fact that Google Translate hasn’t managed it yet, either – and in order to make this happen faster, who better to speak to then than those motivated by the idea of Twitter in their language?

“But, Christos, couldn’t you just hire a bunch of translators?” Sure, why do it for free using millions of fluent speakers when you could spend hundreds of thousands of dollars a year paying an entire department of translators? Yeah. Exactly. Twitter is a site built around community, and Wikipedia made its name by allowing the average visitor to say “hey, I had a part in the success of this site”, so why not other sites? If people are willing to get involved for free, and have the required skills, why aren’t you taking them on already?

It needs to be managed. Translating the second biggest social network on the planet into many different languages is not as easily controlled, regulated and quality-assured as Chuck’s chilli recipe drive. But at the same time, if he received four million responses, the traffic to his blog would be so large he’d need to find a better way of coping – chillirecipes.com would be a good start. It’s all about the scale. The more fans you have, the more crowd-sourced information you get, and the more data management time slots you’ll need, as a direct result.

I’d love to test out crowd-sourcing. In terms of a small business, however, the thing with using it in that capacity is that you’ve got to have a really solid connection with your followers, or nothing will come back to you bar a tidal wave of spam, and the odd gem. Twitter are huge, and people want to contribute because it’s cool. Chuck’s fans want to contribute because they, also, see him as cool. The similarity between the two? They are both, to some degree, a brand. Twitter’s a brand in the traditional sense. Chuck is an individual, but an author who needs to market his own products to some degree.

By cutting costs on data influxes like these, more time can be devoted to external output, and crowd-sourcing becomes your crowd-pleaser as more of your time gets spent connecting with the market rather than fuelling the company’s self-sustaining engine. So test it out – ask people things. Ask for opinions. Nothing pleases the average person more than being able to answer someone else’s question or offer knowledge. It’s a human trait. So is the social sharing of information. So use it.

Watching The Social Network on DVD the other night, my first experience of the award-winning portrayal of Mark Zuckerberg’s rise to fame and financial success at the head of Facebook, I knew once it had finished that I wanted to watch it again. Probably another ten times after that.

It wasn’t the glamour of success, the money, the vapid groupies, the slick, suited yes-men, that drew me into the film. It was watching him code. The first hour of that film was, in my opinion, by far the most satisfying. I wasn’t anywhere near as interested in the people surrounding Zuckerberg as the little tech-wizard himself. Misogynist, traitor, socially inept, self-centred – call him what you will, but ultimately the fact he created one of the most impressively addictive and comprehensive online experiences in his early twenties, becoming a billionaire in the process, demands respect.

His motivations for building the first version came from a dark, spiteful, sexist place. This can’t be denied – the blog he writes in the film is taken, word for word, from Zuckerberg’s own LiveJournal. But I couldn’t help but marvel at how fast he put the site together, how quickly other people cottoned on to what he was doing. Such an impressive mind, and one that locked onto an idea so firmly that it was impossible to even gain his attention until he needed cash for a server, immediately securing ownership of his site beyond the average hosting deal.

It made me think about the possibilities of sites that immediately start to generate a huge community. Of course, they’re all built on the same fundamental idea – people are nosy. We all want to know where you were, who you were with, and most importantly, what you thought about that particular event, even as we throw our own judgements around our subconscious. The ability to explore someone else’s life, someone who’s ever-so-slightly different to you, is so addictive to most internet users, most people in fact, that we had no hope of resisting Facebook.

But how do you build a website based around this idea? How do you find the one niche that will hit the sweet spot in hundreds of millions of people, like Facebook, or Twitter? There’s no more avenues for social media sites, not any more. Facebook and Twitter have the market sewn up, and the few variations on their ever-popular theme have already been designed and launched.

Sites that can engender conventions are always worth a go – Penny Arcade proved that if enough people form a community around your site, and the industry you commentate on respects your judgement, to some degree, getting them to put a ton of booths up at a huge venue and selling tickets is going to make a lot of money, regardless of whether the money goes into the bank accounts of the owners, the company, or a charity.

Have any of you ever tried to build up a website that makes money solely through the traffic generated by a loyal and ever-expanding community of users? You’ll need some real USPs to get it going, and it’s not going to be easy. In fact, at first, it’s going to be a nightmare to get someone to sign up unless they knew you prior to the site’s inception, and even that’s a chore, sometimes. But keep slogging away. You’d be surprised at how many people have seen major financial success via the web simply by never giving up. Now, either watch The Social Network to inspire yourself, or don’t, and then go be one of those people. I wish you the very best of luck.

Well, last week I spoke about a good friend of mine that’s getting hitched soon, but unfortunately is a little hard-up when it comes to a honeymoon budget. So he entered a competition whereby his video (a short film of his proposal, highly worth a look) is voted on, and ultimately the top three videos are awarded honeymoons on luxurious foreign islands. It sounds wonderful, and seemed like a great way to test my talents at promoting something via social media. Here are the stats for the last week:

- Last Monday, he had 70 votes and around 300 views. He now has 209 votes and 1437 views.

- Last Monday, there were no tweets and no retweets with the hash-tag “jasonandstephanie”. There are now over 30 tweets and around 10 retweets.

It’s looking good so far, and Jason remains firmly in second place, fast gaining on the video in first place that hasn’t had that many new votes in the past week. The video is slowly spreading across the social networks we both have access to, and through Twitter for both MoreDigital and his own account, he continues to tweet while I schedule more to go live via Twufffer. This week, I’d like to see the video in first place get displaced by Jason’s entirely, and work on keeping him in first place throughout February and March.

If you’re curious as to how you can get involved, please contact Jason at @BigManFanelli or leave a comment at the blog and I’ll get in touch with you immediately. The fact that we’ve increased his votes by almost 200%, and his views by almost 500% is staggering, and really does prove that if you’re committed enough to a single idea, then it’s very likely that it will work. So please, vote if you can, or at least watch the video. You can comment with Facebook or with a Liberty Travel commenting account (I use this myself, it allows me to vote and to comment). The next update is Monday the 21st, so until then, enjoy the rest of the MoreDigital blog posts for the week and we’ll keep you updated, or you can follow @more_digital for more news.