Today Facebook introduced their newFacebook Questions feature, which allows you to ask questions to the Facebook community and is public to everyone on Facebook and perhaps viewable by search engines too.
Here are some questions asked:
Seems like a nifty new feature that distinguishes regular Status Updates from “Questions” and can be useful for brands on Facebook Pages.
It looks like Facebook still has some work to do in terms of publishing options, where currently since I’m an admin of Earthbound Media Groups Facebook Page it’s adopting my personal profile publishing options versus the EMG Fan Page’s custom options. It may be a fluke since I doubt Facebook is now allowing Fan Page status updates to be customizable to publish to Administrators’ friends only.
Here’s a look at the difference between a Status Update from the Fan page versus a Asked Question:
You also have the option of following the Question to be updated on when people respond to it.
What do you think of Facebook’s new Questions feature? Let us know!
Let’s Discuss: A very insightful panel hosted last night by networking organization Digital LA entitled “Digital Music Panel: Artists Go Social.” The panel was comprised of artists, artist management, music labels, marketing technology providers, and even the CMO of The Grammys.
EMG 30-Second Rundown
The general topic of the panel discussion was how artists are using social media and digital technology to market themselves and their music. A wide range of questions directed at the panel covered areas such as the varied approaches to social media taken by emerging artists vs. established artists, the shifting role of the record label in promoting artists, what it is fans expect from the artists they engage with, and emerging technologies impacting how fans connect with artists.
The EMG Takeaway
Here are four themes that emerged from the panel that I found relevant and interesting. With a shift in context, these themes can easily be applied to brands in general, not just music artists.
New Revenue Models Continue to Emerge – The music industry is no stranger to experimenting with revenue models for monetization of artists, driven for years by an erosion of album sales, shrinking profit margins, and rampant piracy. One of the interesting models shared at the panel was that of a revenue share between mobile application developer (in this case, BlueHaze) and artist. Rather than having an artist (or label) front money for the development of a mobile application, BlueHaze has arranged deals where revenue derived from the application is split between BlueHaze and the artist. In this model, both parties have monetary incentive to see the application succeed, the artist doesn’t take on any financial risk, and the application developer has the potential to see greater upside than they would from a standard development deal.
Artists Take Control – One of the key themes of the panel was that artists are more empowered than ever to take promotion of their music into their own hands via social media and digital endeavors. This isn’t a ground-breaking theme, but I felt compelled to include it so I could drop this gem of a quote from one of the panel-members, an LA-based artist with national exposure: “I’m a rapper, I shouldn’t know about web optimization – but I do.” In other words, this empowerment means a modern music artist, especially an emerging one, needs skill sets that go beyond just the musical variety.
Don’t Ignore the Etc. – In the context of social networks, there’s a phrase we use at EMG called “Don’t ignore the etc.” in response to people referring to “Facebook, Twitter, etc.” One of the artists on the panel was adamant about this in response to an audience member’s remark about the decline of MySpace’s user base. To this artist, MySpace still represented a very viable source of communication and interaction with fans, and was ignored at the artist’s peril. Not ignoring the etc. means recognizing the communities and networks that matter to your fans.
Convert Your Audience – It’s not enough to just accumulate an audience through social media. Ideally, artists will implement mechanisms for converting their audiences in a way that directly impacts the artist’s success. This doesn’t mean just Tweeting out a link to Ticketmaster either. The most creative conversion mechanisms reward audiences for taking action, and two of the companies present on the panel, CultureJam and Eventful, offer technology that allow artists to do just that. CultureJam offers a product that allows bands to deliver, among other things, free MP3 downloads to fans in exchange for sending out promotional Tweets on the band’s behalf. In this conversion, the fans get music, the band gets exposure. Eventful gives artists a platform for directing their fans to “demand” local concerts. In this conversion, the fans get a better chance of seeing their favorite artists, the band gains both leverage with local promoters, as well as valuable insight for planning tours.
Final Words: While the economics of the music industry can be at times daunting to artists, the availability of tools, channels, and technologies for growing an audience and making it count is very exciting, and ripe with opportunity. It should also be noted that no amount of tools, channels, and technology can make bad music good (mediocre music maybe), and these tools, channels, and technology require incredible dedication, strategy, and hustle to be effective.
3 Questions to Continue the Discussion
If you’re an artist, what web technology could you not live without?
If you’re a fan, what is most memorable experience you’ve had with a band through social media?
If you’re a marketer of artists, but social technology provides the best blend of promotional effectiveness with positive experience for the fans?
Facebook Fan Pages have evolved to be more than just branded mini-sites filled with engaging apps and a forum for discussion, they are very commonly used for entertainment (as discussed in a previous post on “Other” Facebook fan pages. But now, skipping the bad and going straight to the evil when the misuse of brand names on fan pages can be considered misleading and spam.
Are Facebook pages used as a marketing tool to “lure” unsuspecting fans into signing up for 3rd party reward offers?
EMG 30-Seconds Rundown:
Facebook pages are meant to be public profiles for businesses and products to drive customer awareness. Brand pages for companies and consumer products, such as Disneyland and Coca-Cola are considered “The Good” type of fan pages.
But there are an increasing number of “Other” Fan Pages for a cause, a movement, or simply just for entertainment.
As Facebook fan pages become more popular, there will be a continual increase in “other” fan pages. Recently, there is a new breed of fan pages on the rise, created by using familiar big brand names, such as Ikea, Walmart, and Best Buy, to convince fans into thinking they can get “gift cards” or “iPads” by becoming a Fan of that recognized brand.
Let’s Discuss: Wildly popular “other” Facebook fan pages that are neither Artist, Band, Public Figure, Brand, Product, Organization, or Local Entity (the categories Facebook expects all fan pages to ascribe to), and the motivating forces behind their creation and popularity with those who fan them.
For context, Honda, which ended its recent Super Bowl commercial with a reference to Facebook.com/Honda, has 299,262 Facebook fans. And in case you’re wondering, “Ra Ra Ra Ah Ah Ah, Roma Ro Ma Ma, Gaga Ooh La La” is a lyric from the Lady Gaga song Bad Romance. That’s correct; a lyric from a Lady Gaga song has more fans on Facebook than the 5th largest manufacturer of cars in the world. I digress.
It’s important to note to that according to Facebook terms of service, “Pages are special profiles that may only be used to promote a business or other commercial, political, or charitable organization or endeavor (including non-profit organizations, political campaigns, bands, and celebrities).” Facebook suggests users who want to create other types of fan pages create a Facebook Group instead, but that hasn’t stopped the flood of these non-conformist Facebook fan pages.
The EMG Takeaway
Why do people create and join these fan pages?
To display adoration (“I love snow cones, I’ll make a Facebook fan page!”) or perhaps to find others who share a common passion; after all, the best social endeavors facilitate connections of value. On the Snow Cones fan page, the post “Do you have an awesome snow cone story? Let’s hear it!” elicited 691 comments, including my favorite, “While I was pregnant with my first son, I was very sick the entire 9 months. I even lost 40 lbs. because I couldn’t keep food down. The only thing I could eat was Snowcones! Snowcones saved me. My son, now 21, always tells this story to explain why he loves them too.” Unofficial fan pages become micro-niche communities around a common passion.
To make others laugh, or to be the author of an internet meme. The virality of the internet is greased with humor (ask the founders of Fail Blog, the creators of Rick Rolling, or the 5 million people who go to Break.com every month). According to the original admin of Ra Ra Ra Ah Ah Ah, Roma Ro Ma Ma, Gaga Ooh La La, “I started the page because it was a joke between me and my friends, we didn’t really like the song and thought the lyrics were really random… I didn’t really expect it to get too many fans but then it randomly got big, very fast.” While I personally wouldn’t laugh if I saw a friend become a fan of this particular page, I might if I noticed a friend fan, “Pretending to Text in Awkward Situations,” (3,149,129 fans and counting).
To make a statement or join a movement. In an environment where fans = popularity, demonstrating that an onion ring can garner more fans than the Prime Minister of Canada is quite a statement. Judging by fan comments on the page “Can this Onion Ring get more fans than Stephen Harper?” (“Onion rings are far more tasty than Conservative policy” and “Even this bad onion ring is better for my health than Stephen Harper”), the statement made by the page creator clearly resonates. In this case fanning a page is almost like slapping a bumper sticker on your car. Also consider that people gravitate towards movements with goals (let’s get more fans than…), and they join these fan pages for the same reason people “followed” Ashton Kutcher on Twitter to help him beat out CNN in a race to one million followers. We want to be a part of something greater than ourselves.
So what can you learn from these “other” fan pages?
As you build your own “official” fan pages, seek out fans that love what you do or the product you provide. When you do engage with your fans, the responses will be that much more passionate, genuine, and valuable to the connections you are creating. Study the most successful of these fan pages as a lesson in what goes viral. “Pretending to Text in Awkward Situations” sounds like an awesome campaign name Boost Mobile. Finally, give your fan base, audience, customers, etc. something to rally around. Yes, contests and sweepstakes are a great motivator, but uniting people in pursuit of a singular and common goal can be very powerful too.
Final Words: Facebook fan pages are great for brands…and a source of niche-communities, viral humor, and Canadian political movements we can all learn from.
3 Questions to Continue the Discussion
Have you joined one of these “other” Facebook fan pages? And if so, why?
Can you suggest a better categorization for these pages than “other”?
Do these pages constitute spam and dilute the value of “official” Facebook fan pages?
EMG 30-Second Rundown: The pace at which technology is accelerating is exaggerating the differences in culture, expectations, and mindsets among different generations of today’s children, teenagers, and young adults. It’s essentially creating mini-generation gaps. Kids only years apart might have vastly different communication preferences, and even mental capabilities such as multi-tasking.
Key Quote: “People two, three or four years apart are having completely different experiences with technology…College students scratch their heads at what their high school siblings are doing, and they scratch their heads at their younger siblings. It has sped up generational differences.”
The EMG Takeaway: Perhaps the notion of the “18-25 year old” marketing segment loses a bit of relevancy as the difference of only a couple years displays itself in exaggerated ways. The article is also resounding endorsement of the discovery process, truly understanding who you are trying to reach, their expectations and needs, and why that knowledge might alter your tactical approach. It’s a phenomenal reminder too for us to step outside of our own expectations for how we want products marketed to us. While one generation might find receiving a text message upon entry to a grocery store utterly intrusive, another generation (or sub-generation) might expect the interaction and find the experience odd or disappointing without it.
Final Words: An article interesting for the insight it provides, and the reminder that it serves.
Three Questions from EMG to Continue the Discussion:
1. How do you stay actively in touch with the expectations of those outside your own generation?
2. Have you observed instances of this mini-generational gap in your own life?
3. Kids have always had the attitude that their parents are hopelessly out of touch; is this any different, or is the contrast of the divide starker than ever?
I’ve been using Google Wave for a few weeks now. In case you somehow haven’t heard of Google Wave before, here is a description from the website:
Google Wave is an online tool for real-time communication and collaboration. A wave can be both a conversation and a document where people can discuss and work together using richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.
In simple terms, I see it as a dynamic message board. It’s an interesting idea, but I haven’t been hooked on it yet. It doesn’t feel conducive for everyday use. I definitely do not see it replacing email or IMing anytime soon, like some suggest will happen. Seems more for specific group projects or interest groups.
Even then, you have to be able to wrap your head around the concept and features in order to be able to use it and I think the general public might be turned off to it before they get past the learning curve.
One of the hardest things at first is that you don’t have any friends when you first join. Two things to help:
1) When you join Google Wave, you should get a wave in your inbox from Google that allows you to invite some friends.
2) In the search box, type “with: public” without quotes so you can browse and join public waves. (see below)
I just got a bunch of invites and sent it out to a few people here at EMG. Maybe I’ll have a change of heart once I start using it in a business setting.
I think it’s important for us to get a clear understanding of the playing field as it relates to digital marketing today in order to prepare for the challenges we most definitely will face tomorrow. My hope is to provide context for the ideas and direction EMG is heading.
I begin with a few questions that I ask myself every day.
What ideas should we lead with? – The one’s with the best or most compelling creative, relevant strategy, newest technology, most popular or that shows the most promising return on investment? Is it all of the above or something much more complex, integrated and visceral?
How do we measure or benchmark success? Monetize social media? Break through barriers? How do we adapt faster and test quicker? Who are we influenced by? Who do we want to influence?
We now know that digital marketing can at times become the single backbone to success or failure – that it is no longer for simply marketing to youth, Millennials and soccer moms.
We have a continuous flood of information and intelligence resources to help us monitor, uncover and identify common campaign curses, unforeseen pitfalls, potential market penetration opportunities, unique engagement challenges, unconventional strategies and user experience best-practices.
Thought Leaders, must now work together to quickly take advantage of the ever changing digital landscape in order to continue to meet and surpass audience expectations; to not become stale; to determine what to embrace and what to ignore.
Digital marketing has now moved well beyond its infancy of simple electronic press kit sites and landing pages, search marketing, widgets, apps, online promotions and mobile contests, display advertising and even alternate reality games.
Think about the ground-breaking campaigns that are showing success with non-competing partnerships; campaigns that are reaching unbeknownst audiences via aggregated and unique content, popularity rankings, social evangelism and innovative creative; that are creating a personalized story and connection with our audiences outside the boundaries of the previous conventional digital campaign.
How much risk do we take, however?
Regardless of the complexity, all of our goals are singular, simple and historical. Identify the audience, both the core and the fringe, find the best way of delivering our content to them, learn from our success and failures, and risk just enough to stand out and be different.
I took a class at UC Irvine called New Technologies during Spring quarter, which greatly changed my thoughts on the Web 2.0 craze. In my last blog I talked about how Social Media and Web 2.0 are two very misconceived terms. I stated that I tend to agree with Sir Tim Berners-Lee, in that since the beginning of the World Wide Web his intention was to create a new level of interactivity on the internet, so there really is nothing new about Web 2.0. I also argued that it is not a business revolution, because PPC ads are still the back bone of online marketing, and they have existed since the dotcom bubble. But, now I see other aspects of Social Media that are a business revolution. Read the rest of this entry »
Before we dive into how Social Media Marketing can greatly assist any online marketing effort, let’s first define some overall goals for an online marketing campaign:
Doing more with online marketing goals-
You want to Increase:
Website traffic (number of unique visitors & returning visitors)
Page views
Ad Exposure
Conversion and Sales
Down to some specifics, you want to:
Improve number of qualified visitors
Increase number of leads
Reduce the cost of leads
Increase online inquiries
Improve overall online user experience
More specifically for your company, product, or service, you want to:
Grow brand awareness
Create positive brand engagement
Find business and networking opportunities
Those are some hefty goals, but guess what? Social Media Marketing efforts can deliver powerful results and help you reach all your online marketing goals.
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