With VCs and IPOs on the horizon for a number of social media sites, it’s clear we’re either at or rapidly approaching the apex of social media infatuation. With Facebook having over 500m users, LinkedIn boasting 90m according to their preliminary IPO documents, and Twitter users tweeting 65m times a day, it’s clear that in gross numbers we’re all ‘into’ social media in some way, shape or form. No doubt, what 2011 will also see are exotic multiples for valuations of these companies, as the founders monetize and capitalize on their ideas and popularity. Of course, it still remains to be seen if these businesses are capable of producing steadily increasing revenues, and if their business models are robust. But you’ve got to admire them for tapping into the latent need of human beings to connect: connect to news and information, insights, each other, or our past.
As we’d expect, the number of marketers claiming to invest in social media has been climbing rapidly - 63% as of last October, with more than half the remaining 37% planning to do so this year, putting the total in excess of 80%. How they are investing remains to be seen – having a company page on Facebook technically is “investing”, even if it isn’t actively leveraged. As we see it, there are probably four core categories of marketers when it comes to social media and social marketing investment:
1. Social Insecurity: Probably the preserve of more regulated industries, such as pharma (and who can blame them, with the impending FDA guidelines coming). This group definitely sees more risk than reward in investing in social media tools. Unlikely to have an ‘external’ social media presence, they may dip their toes in the water on their company intranet, or have an employee on-line suggestion box, but not much else.
2. Sociopath-etic: This group believes in talking about social media as purely marketing or communication investments. They tend to put ‘like’ buttons all over the place, without much idea of what they plan to do with their fans and few plans for keeping their fans engaged over time. They also can’t understand why the entire world doesn’t love their brand like they do, and hence have a relatively small number of followers (mostly their employees and suppliers) compared to their true customer base.
3. Social Workers: Companies who have started seeing the integration options of social media outside of purely marketing/corporate communications. Maybe they are starting to use for internal/external creative problem solving or leverage the potential across departments like finance or HR. Maybe they’ve moved beyond seeing social media as purely Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or YouTube and have started to explore the vast array of specialist services, tools, and means of connecting. Bottom line is they’re working to see how and where social media can be leveraged, although often in isolation to the overall business strategy.
4. Socially Integrated: Few are at this level, but basically these are experienced “Social Workers” who view social technologies and channels as implicit in any strategic business and marketing strategies they construct. They’ve worked out how to integrate sales, marketing and social activities and tools to get a 360 degree picture of customers and prospects, and have worked out how to populate a ‘single view’ of customers across both normal datapoints and social datapoints.
Who is socially integrated? A matter of opinion, but we feel there aren’t many. There's certainly an argument to put Starbucks, Southwest Airlines on the list, and maybe IBM, Ford, GE, and Coke.
But what’s your view?
No comments:
Post a Comment