Don’t start engaging on a new social network before you do these 2 things!
Dave Cutler at MarketingProfs wrote this great piece on “Five Reasons You Shouldn’t Ignore (Insert Name of Shiny New Social Media Platform Here)”.
I humbly disagreed in a comment on the blog - as I believe the latest shiny social network for businesses and orgs should not always be followed or even experimented without *first* bearing these two things in mind:
# 1. Always consider what you expect to achieve from engaging on a social network. Is it for brand building, user engagement, driving leads or customer support etc?
Different social networks are often better suited to different types of engagement e.g. Facebook for user engagement, twitter for influencers and customer support, Linked In for B2B and Pinterest for media / e-commerce.
Try to understand this network first and research whether its going to be worth your while. Don’t just do it because you think everyone else is!
# 2. Ask yourself how much time and resource do you have to grow, nurture and manage a social network, or multiple social networks? It takes a considerable amount of time to make social media work, and by adding more and more networks the work load can vastly increase.
Experimentation is good, but also think for the mid-term. How will I manage, how will I spread my time? You can’t ask someone for dinner and not give them something to eat (I love saying this!). Engaging socially takes time no matter what people say.
The advice Dave gave in his article is super – but I would always remind you to (i) understand what you want / hope to achieve from social media and (ii) how much extra time you have to commit if the social network does take off. Otherwise, you might have the situation where you are on every social network out there, however, none of them are really working!
How Mozilla Firefox engages fans every day on Facebook
Many people commented on my last post about growing and nurturing brand advocates on Facebook. You asked, so how are you really doing that? Here are a few simple ways based on how we engage fans every day at Mozilla:
# 1. Vary your Facebook content. Think carefully about your content strategy and how posts effective each other. At Mozilla we try to plan 7-14 days out (and many months longer for big campaigns / announcements). We keep a balance of 1/3 product news, 1/3 tips and tricks, and 1/3 just plain-old-engaging-fun. This variety allows us to communicate broadly. We’re conscious not to be narcissistic only giving our own news when necessary, and focusing on what will be of value to the reader.
# 2. Allow users to create content. We very often ask the opinion of our fans, and then post those comments, questions, photos. We have a ‘fan of the week’. It’s a demonstration of who we are, and how we authentically communicate.
# 3. Think Share. Back to content strategy. You may well be creating interesting content. But ask yourself, will someone want to share it, like it, comment upon it? Alter your content strategy, write a post in a way that will generate engagement. Ask more questions, ask your fans to ‘like’ and ‘share’.
# 4. Give back. You cant always take (see #1). Content should be a balance. Sharing should feel fun and engaging to the user - it shouldn’t feel forced. Don’t ‘market’ to your fans - talk to them. Treat them as friends (remember that’s what you do on Facebook!).
The value of Facebook is huge, the potential to amplify ones message is massive, and yet every day brands are failing to treat their fans as citizens and only wanting to push their products. Communicating regularly in channel in a way which is balanced and authentic will lead to your brand being talked about for the long term.
Want to win brand advocacy on facebook? Take-small-engaging-steps-often
Read this super post today on Marketing Prof entitled “Four Ideas for Activating Your Brand Advocates”. Theresa Trevor of Amplifinity describes ways to convert Facebook fans who ‘like’ a page (and who probably don’t “…promote your brand in any measurable way”) to become brand advocates who are actively engaged in promoting your brand, bringing in new business, writing reviews etc.
At Mozilla where word of mouth marketing and brand advocacy are key to both our engagement and acquisition strategy, we already actively employ these types of brand advocacy programs and have done so successfully for many years (its partly how as a non-profit, we’re able to compete alongside those tech behemoths).
Particularly with regard to growing a larger Facebook audience (currently 8.5 million fans) and the debate of quality over quantity, I believe audience size is actually incredibly valuable, but much like Trevor asserts, only if you continue to effectively encourage group participation and action. Said another way, you can’t invite someone to dinner and not serve any food — nor would you want to cook a 5 course meal, only to then have no-one eat? We engage with our Facebook fans every day and over the last six months have gone a level deeper. We’ve begun to focus beyond our monthly Facebook activity rate as a core metric (averaging 45-50% of our fans liking / commenting/ sharing p/m), to doing that plus specifically focusing on increasing the number of Facebook shares (# of people talking about this).
We are able to calculate the number of friends our Facebook fans have, and therefore understand (i) what is effectively our entire ‘potential Facebook audience’ and (ii) the audience reach for a post that was talked about by our Facebook fans. That multiplication number for Firefox on Facebook is 81. Over the past six months we’ve been able to successfully increase the number of shares on Facebook by 20% each quarter respectively. Think about that with a Facebook audience of our size, and think about how much amplification that translates into? (In the first quarter generating more than 2 million people talking about Firefox on Facebook).
Most companies these days have a serious Facebook strategy, some with big and expensive campaigns, — for me, that’s not always necessary. Rather nurturing daily interaction with thoughtful content and building social gravity is what will create loyal users, who will ultimately want to talk about you with their friends. And just about anyone can do that!
Taking very small engaging steps —> The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
Being authentic and social comes naturally
Yesterday I had a great conversation with someone who is looking to move into social engagement; marketing that makes a difference with more human interaction. We talked about building a strong loyal user base via social, and how passionate users can encourage others. Participation, Engagement, Human were the words that kept coming up time and time again by both sides throughout the meeting.
Mozilla has been doing this since it began — and whilst we have implemented clear strategies around the Mozilla mission, IMHO it struck me that our mission, and non-profit nature drew us naturally into the social sphere with good honest interaction and communication. With no motivation other than to make the web better, we embodied and embraced the evolution of the web as the place to create, to participate and to connect (and heck — we’ve done an awful lot to create that space too!).
Social is now a massive part of our communication strategy, it still permeates through all areas of our organization — and we’re still having those honest and authentic conversations. (See my post from late last year on our user social strategy).
Social tools have gotten more sophisticated, and the world has adopted them — and for Mozilla good honest communication with real people will never go away.
“To pin, or not to pin…”
So to ‘pin’ is the new like. Suddenly it seems that to ‘pin’ is everywhere. ‘Pin’ was mentioned in three separate meetings I had last week in varying forms. We’re not just talking ‘Pinterest’ here, but pinning: websites, apps, new stories and even restaurants. I even caught myself saying it in conversation today on a completely unrelated topic!
And on that note, I’m somewhat afraid that we’re about to see a slew of niche Pinterest style sites that will truly only exist to be (i) an immense distraction of time for their fans, and (ii) yet another burden on marketeers constantly battling to keep up with the latest vogue of social expression.
The bigger interesting trend I see though with this type of engagement, is yet another step toward images taking center stage with minimal amounts of text waiting in the wings. Be it Facebook’s new timeline view, MSN Now, or Pinterest itself - the direction is (what I am calling…) ‘image first’ followed by the slightest amount of written word - usually headline grabbing and that’s enough.
It’s a demand of our busy social generation who only create/consume/interact with information in smaller and smaller bite size pieces. The old adage a ‘picture speaks a thousand words’ is so true, and our hunger for images has never been stronger. Thanks to the likes of Instagram (with its $500 million valuation) everyone can take and post an artful picture within a few moments. I do it myself, and love it.
As a creative and visually driven person, I guess I should be happy that the Web is becoming more colorful. And in a way I am. I’m also concerned (warning old person thinking here) for the future of long form expression. And how images without context can alarm, manipulate, confuse and much more.
Lets keep enjoying this visual goodness… but please don’t forget to read!
Hugs, handshakes and high-fives
In the realm of social media as king, having friends is easy, but keeping all those new friends engaged and nurturing that friendship isn’t as simple as it sounds. At Mozilla we have nearly 6.5M friends on Facebook, and we work hard to engage with our fans on multiple levels.
Our content is split pretty evenly between being (i) informative about Firefox as a product and sharing the latest news, (ii) offering helpful advice and tips on how to make the most of Firefox, and (iii) most importantly balanced with fun, engaging and inspiring engagement activities.
Throughout 2011 we’ve been able to significantly grow Firefox engagement activity on Facebook, with between 45-50% of our fans interacting with the brand on a monthly basis. We’ve also doubled the number of fans who ‘like’ Firefox. That’s pretty impressive given our size and compared to other high-profile brands.
The basis for all this? A hug, a handshake, a high-five. Every time we post and consider content in our direct communication channels we do that remembering our followers are our ‘friends’. We tell news, share tips, give virtual hugs, smiles and pointers to fans we care deeply about.
There are many more ways we can improve our interactions with fans and increase our direct engagement further - we’d love to hear your thoughts on how we can continue to make our social media channels engaging.
We’re in the business of building friendships at Mozilla. Its those friends who have made us, and will continue to make Mozilla successful.
