Tracking Coolness: Social Media Outsourcing
Today everyone knows what social media is, although we may all be a bit confused as to why we need it. We have Twitter, Pintrest, Facebook and a slew of other and a variety of other sites and products that are somehow supposed to make our lives better. That may be fine if you’re a teen that’s looking for more social recognition, but when you are an overworked entrepreneur who barely has time to speak with customers, finding out that you have yet another task to perform in the Internet economy is less than thrilling.
That’s why so many firms are looking to outsource management of their social media campaigns.
The link between social media and business sometimes seems like a tenuous one, but the basic idea is sound. Your customers now spend a lot of their time on the Internet, so you want to reach out to them on the Internet. However, each of these tools is a bit different and has a different model to interact with potential customers. Facebook is one of the best known and established tools. IF you’re famous, or want to be famous, Facebook is a great place to house your “identity.” You name a page after yourself, post your picture and a timeline of events in your life, and friends and family comment on your activities. You tell the world what you’re doing and ask friends and family to join you.
LinkedIn, another social site, is similar but focused on your career instead of your personal life. Here you list the jobs you've held, the degrees and certifications you’ve earned and other data about your work life.
And of course, you have twitter, with its 144 character limitations. You can “tweet” about anything you like, as long as it’s no more than 144 characters long. The Twitterverse seems to make up for this lack of length by adding volume. The number of tweets by some twitterers is phenomenal, leading to a flood of … ahhh… twitteration. Other sites, like Pinterest, focus on telling your story through pictures, with a minimum of text.
Some firms claim that business has flourished by staying on top of social media, and other have seen less spectacular results. Finding the right site, developing the right message, and providing your followers (if you can get them) can be quite a chore. Which is why social media outsourcing has become such a hot topic. Facebook isn't just a tool for the social paparazzi. Big corporations are putting big money behind social media. In many cases, these big firms are also turning to social media outsourcing because they are at a loss as to how they can get the results they need (whatever they are) through these tools. To really make social media work, you need to do a lot more than tweet, “I need followers! Check out my cool site at http://clueless.com”.
To complicate matters, social media sites, in their very brief history, tend not to last very long. In the good old days of print or television, if you wanted to get in touch with your customers, you put ads in a newspaper or made a commercial. If you chose, say Saturday Night Live or the New York Times as the best “placement” for your brand to reach your audience, you have some expectation that you are forming a relationship that will last for some time.
If your choice of medium does something you don’t like, say a TV show that makes a politically offensive statement, you might cut of your relationship with that show or newspaper, or what have you. But in social media the reason for joining or abandoning a particular social site is… coolness. Coolness is the coin of the realm in social media. The Internet world, and especially the young hip crowd that most firms are the most interested in attracting, swarm to cool social media. But how long can any site stay cool?
The answer seems to be two to five years. Take Facebook. Very col, or so Wall Street thought a year ago when they pumped billions of dollars into Facebook’s IPO (initial public offering). Some financial analysts asked, “Why is a firm that doesn't sell anything, and is free to join, worth so much?” The answer was, “Well, none of us knows, but since everyone has a Facebook account we’ll work out the money-making part later on.” The problem is that the more people that join, the less cool a site becomes. Coolness is about exclusivity. Either you “discover” something first or the site is restrictive and keep the less cool out. That’s a bit of a problem when Wall Street and other financial organizations believe that bigger is better (and worth more) and the users you want are looking for small and exclusive.
Facebook has begun to admin to this problem. They need to, to explain to all those nice people who bought their stock why Facebook’s financial performance has been so poor. Facebook has become so popular that not only your friends join in, but so too do your parents and your grandparents! You may love your granddad, but when was the last time he showed up and raised the coolness factor?
Yet, with everyone on Facebook, that’s where your grandparents are headed. And it has Facebook worried. If you go back a few years, it was MySpace that was the top social media site, and a few years earlier it was Friendster. They all got 3 to 5 years, and then the population moved on because some other site was cooler, the new site had new features or the site tried to get some revenue from its users, and they rebelled. Bombarding your users with ads or asking for fees is WAY uncool!
If the arrival of your grandparents was a sign that Facebook was losing its coolness, then the sign that it is ready for a cool coma is… the Amish have arrived! Remember the Amish? That quaint and isolated group of farmers in Pennsylvania. They shun all technology, including electricity and the combustion engine, and depend on (literally) horsepower to get around.
However, the Amish do allow for a minor exception. When an Amish teen reaches 16, they are eligible for Rumspringa, which is basically a year off from being Amish. They can drink, date and use computers. Guess which site they all head to? That’s right, Facebook. Nothing says Internet cool like being the preferred social media of a group of sworn technophobes.
Managing a social media campaign means much more than just posting an occasional picture on Facebook, or sending out a tweet on Twitter. It means designing a campaign to effectively tell the world your message. It also means finding which site has the best draw, which in turn means is the most cool. However, we also now know that popular is the enemy of cool. Unless you've got a magic touch and a lot of time, it makes sense to outsource this increasingly complex process. Is outsourcing always the right solution? Not at all, but for firms that are just starting to grapple with social media, outsourcing this task as soon as possible is the coolest option of all!
That’s why so many firms are looking to outsource management of their social media campaigns.
The link between social media and business sometimes seems like a tenuous one, but the basic idea is sound. Your customers now spend a lot of their time on the Internet, so you want to reach out to them on the Internet. However, each of these tools is a bit different and has a different model to interact with potential customers. Facebook is one of the best known and established tools. IF you’re famous, or want to be famous, Facebook is a great place to house your “identity.” You name a page after yourself, post your picture and a timeline of events in your life, and friends and family comment on your activities. You tell the world what you’re doing and ask friends and family to join you.
LinkedIn, another social site, is similar but focused on your career instead of your personal life. Here you list the jobs you've held, the degrees and certifications you’ve earned and other data about your work life.
And of course, you have twitter, with its 144 character limitations. You can “tweet” about anything you like, as long as it’s no more than 144 characters long. The Twitterverse seems to make up for this lack of length by adding volume. The number of tweets by some twitterers is phenomenal, leading to a flood of … ahhh… twitteration. Other sites, like Pinterest, focus on telling your story through pictures, with a minimum of text.
Some firms claim that business has flourished by staying on top of social media, and other have seen less spectacular results. Finding the right site, developing the right message, and providing your followers (if you can get them) can be quite a chore. Which is why social media outsourcing has become such a hot topic. Facebook isn't just a tool for the social paparazzi. Big corporations are putting big money behind social media. In many cases, these big firms are also turning to social media outsourcing because they are at a loss as to how they can get the results they need (whatever they are) through these tools. To really make social media work, you need to do a lot more than tweet, “I need followers! Check out my cool site at http://clueless.com”.
To complicate matters, social media sites, in their very brief history, tend not to last very long. In the good old days of print or television, if you wanted to get in touch with your customers, you put ads in a newspaper or made a commercial. If you chose, say Saturday Night Live or the New York Times as the best “placement” for your brand to reach your audience, you have some expectation that you are forming a relationship that will last for some time.
If your choice of medium does something you don’t like, say a TV show that makes a politically offensive statement, you might cut of your relationship with that show or newspaper, or what have you. But in social media the reason for joining or abandoning a particular social site is… coolness. Coolness is the coin of the realm in social media. The Internet world, and especially the young hip crowd that most firms are the most interested in attracting, swarm to cool social media. But how long can any site stay cool?
The answer seems to be two to five years. Take Facebook. Very col, or so Wall Street thought a year ago when they pumped billions of dollars into Facebook’s IPO (initial public offering). Some financial analysts asked, “Why is a firm that doesn't sell anything, and is free to join, worth so much?” The answer was, “Well, none of us knows, but since everyone has a Facebook account we’ll work out the money-making part later on.” The problem is that the more people that join, the less cool a site becomes. Coolness is about exclusivity. Either you “discover” something first or the site is restrictive and keep the less cool out. That’s a bit of a problem when Wall Street and other financial organizations believe that bigger is better (and worth more) and the users you want are looking for small and exclusive.
Facebook has begun to admin to this problem. They need to, to explain to all those nice people who bought their stock why Facebook’s financial performance has been so poor. Facebook has become so popular that not only your friends join in, but so too do your parents and your grandparents! You may love your granddad, but when was the last time he showed up and raised the coolness factor?
Yet, with everyone on Facebook, that’s where your grandparents are headed. And it has Facebook worried. If you go back a few years, it was MySpace that was the top social media site, and a few years earlier it was Friendster. They all got 3 to 5 years, and then the population moved on because some other site was cooler, the new site had new features or the site tried to get some revenue from its users, and they rebelled. Bombarding your users with ads or asking for fees is WAY uncool!
If the arrival of your grandparents was a sign that Facebook was losing its coolness, then the sign that it is ready for a cool coma is… the Amish have arrived! Remember the Amish? That quaint and isolated group of farmers in Pennsylvania. They shun all technology, including electricity and the combustion engine, and depend on (literally) horsepower to get around.
However, the Amish do allow for a minor exception. When an Amish teen reaches 16, they are eligible for Rumspringa, which is basically a year off from being Amish. They can drink, date and use computers. Guess which site they all head to? That’s right, Facebook. Nothing says Internet cool like being the preferred social media of a group of sworn technophobes.
Managing a social media campaign means much more than just posting an occasional picture on Facebook, or sending out a tweet on Twitter. It means designing a campaign to effectively tell the world your message. It also means finding which site has the best draw, which in turn means is the most cool. However, we also now know that popular is the enemy of cool. Unless you've got a magic touch and a lot of time, it makes sense to outsource this increasingly complex process. Is outsourcing always the right solution? Not at all, but for firms that are just starting to grapple with social media, outsourcing this task as soon as possible is the coolest option of all!
