Do You Want to Discuss Products in Social Media?
With a name like SocialMedia.com, it had better be good - right? The company called SocialMedia is launching a number of new advertising products today and they beg a question that could be fundamental to the financial viability of this new online world - do people want to talk about products and be active participants in advertising campaigns? We're not sure how we feel about this idea and we're curious about your perspective.
SocialMedia.com has raised millions of dollars in financing and says it's seen excellent results in previous campaigns on Facebook and other social networks. Now it's going to bring its strategy to Twitter, dedicated microsites and elsewhere around the web. The strategy is essentially to track, highlight and prompt casual conversations online about an advertiser's product. Do you want to be part of those kinds of conversations?
Social Media's Nick Gonzalez says the company's previous campaigns have been found to "increase purchasing intent 6% over standard digital campaigns and in target audiences that went up to 13% over standard digital campaigns." Those campaigns asked users of things like Facebook applications what they thought about a product, then shared the answers out with respondents' friend networks on Facebook.
Now the company is going to roll out a service that tracks Twitter mentions of a company, product or keyword. The discovered search results will be filterable, can be limited to a particular group of users, and can then be displayed in a widget or microsite. For an additional fee SocialMedia will purchase ads in popular Twitter clients that prompt users to Tweet about an advertiser. Twitter users don't get paid for doing so, they just get the opportunity to offer public feedback, perhaps with a common hashtag so all the related tweets can be viewed publicly with ease. We can imagine people going for that. RSS readers can click here to participate in a poll on this topic and view the results.
Other new products being rolled out today include branded embeddable polls and activity stream publishing microsites that will function a little like Twitter but will stand alone on an advertiser's site.
"I came here to talk about my thoughts, feelings and experiences with friends and a global network of diverse people - and you want me to write about your product?"
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Great info thanks.
Posted by: Guias Local
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May 11, 2009 10:19 AM
Social Media is just a new medium for creating an engagement between consumers/prospects and products/services of brand.I am sure this medium is better than other traditional medium for engaging with consumers.
These ads are better than banners and text ads. But the question is about authenticity. A friend tells me that he really likes the veggie bagels at a local coffee shop. Okay, I trust my friend. I'll try it.
A happy shopper appears in an ad and tells me that he really likes the bagels he buys at the grocery store. I'm not so sure. I don't know the person. But if 50 people said the grocery store bagels are pretty good then I would be more convinced.
I guess in this new form of social advertising it comes down to number of people making the endorsement.
Data suggests people want to share information about experience with products they feel passionate about. Experience is social capital. There is a lot of risk in a purchase decision. From the perspective of the enterprise, Social media is a huge research and CRM opportunity--not an advertising platform. As Rollo May said-the opposite of love isn't hate-- it's indifference. If people are talking about your product it means something-- it has value that can be leveraged. Marketers know this but marketing is not advertising. Paid discussions and sponsored dialog is a miss-appropriation of resources.
Advertising is fine--particularly if it isn't disruptive. That's hard to do these days. Awareness building is growing more difficult by the day. We'll see lots more of these futile efforts until marketers understand the role of influence and experience.
If all you got is a hammer--everything looks like a nail.
Here's an alert about human nature -- we are more likely to be vocal when we're upset about something. Yes, people will talk about products and services ... if they hate them.
Many people are tethered to some form of media nearly every moment of the day. It's unlikely people will devote incremental time to product discussions unless there is an axe to grind or financial benefit.
To me this is just a one more channel of advertising, then at the end of the day, advertising it is, however you wanna call it.
The thing I personally don't like about this idea is the risk to promote products or services which are in fact "bad" trough a communication channel which works (only) based on credibility and authenticity.
What we know is, that if users who expect authenticity find out that the source is not authentic and/or the service/product this source promote is "no good" then you destroy the credibility of the service you are using (let's say twitter) the one of the client (service/product) and of the multiplicator you are relying on (buddy who is promoting on twitter).
So overall, a very, very risky business.
The greatest benefit of Facebook is that it has many groups on the site that you can join. So if you are interested in Chicago Cubs you can research Chicago Cubs in the groups section and you will be able to find friends on there that like the Cubs. This is just one example, I know that you can join groups of your favorite football team, television show, or whatever you want for the most part! If you can't find a group for your interest, you can simply create one!
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I totally agree with this, another new kind of advertising
sounds like a reasonable idea which to me it also sounds like if this new advertisment, would become even better than the banner ADS and the text ADS.
Multnomah's sister county to the south, Jackson, is a pioneer in the exploitation of technology. Jackson may be the first (sizable) government agency in the world to archive ALL of its employee e-mail (and other e-messages like IM) indefinitely. Although such a policy is highly unusual, it reflects the county's progressive realization that e-mail records are an asset of both the county's government and its citizens.
Do You Want to Discuss Products in Your Social Media Experience? http://bit.ly/6K7fn POLL more ads coming 2 Twitter, how do u feel about it? [from http://twitter.com/marshallk/statuses/1764902968]
Posted by: Marshall Kirkpatrick
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May 24, 2009 10:57 AM
i saw the stats on this site (build by a friend of a friend). they've had days with over 2 million UV
Posted by: sean percival
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May 24, 2009 11:24 AM
I agree with you to a certain extent.
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Companies have some problems with pull marketing, that's why is not working with social media sometimes ...
totally agree with this, another new kind of advertising
sounds like a reasonable idea which to me it also sounds like if this new advertisment, would become even better than the banner ADS and the text ADS.
The greatest benefit of Facebook is that it has many groups on the site that you can join. So if you are interested in Chicago Cubs you can research Chicago Cubs in the groups section and you will be able to find friends on there that like the Cubs. This is just one example, I know that you can join groups of your favorite football team, television show, or whatever you want for the most part! If you can't find a group for your interest, you can simply create one!
If all you got is a hammer--everything looks like a nail.
what a great post.
I am grateful to you for this great content.
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I'm currently trying to think where threaded comments fit in the roadmap right now, but it is something that is definitely planned. We're not going to say people *have* to use threaded comments, but the system shouldn't restrict people who want to have that option. Plus for larger conversations I think threaded comments make everything easier to follow.