Imagine Your Reality

Justin Kistner of Webtrends posted about the new Facebook Like buttons, which are set up so that if someone clicks a like button on your website, they are sharing their personal data on Facebook with your business. The business can then post a message to all the people who chose to like something. In other words, you no longer have to “like” a business page to be reached by that business. As long as you like a product or service the business has, then a business can choose to send a message to you, even if you never liked the business page. And while this is seemingly marketing heaven, it also shows that Facebook once again has been very short-sited (pun intended) in understanding the social implications of their changes.

To be fair, Facebook has definitely capitalized on the psychological manipulation that is involved in using the like button. They undoubtedly reason that if a person chooses to push the like button about a service or product on a business webpage, then they will be accepting of being contacted by that business. There are two problems with that reasoning however:

1. The like button doesn’t use double opt-in, which makes it spammy. How we know that Facebook isn’t using the double opt-in feature is simple. Once you click the button you’ve given permission for a business to contact you. But with double opt-in, what should happen is that the like button is pushed, and a small window opens asking the user permission for the business to contact. If and only if the user clicks a second time indicating that it’s permissible for the business to  contact them, then it actually be said that the like button is not a spam feature.

2. Facebook shares the user’s private data with the business. Given how much outcry has already occurred about how Facebook has intended to share user information with third parties, this move demonstrates that Facebook isn’t concerned with user private data. The fact is, Facebook has already moved into the gray area of sharing user data with third parties.

And there’s a third problem, namely that Facebook is trying to capitalize on the psychological benefits of “like” This is blatantly manipulative on their part, because what it assumes is that just because someone indicates they like something, then that means they wanted to be contacted about it, when in fact they may simply like something, but not want to be contacted. By making that assumption Facebook is risking a lot of user ire and unhappiness. And eventually users will go elsewhere. Justin Kistner thinks Twitter has a good shot at being a contender to Facebook, and I do as well, because there is not near the amount of privacy issues with Twitter as what has occurred with Facebook.

Interview with Justin Kistner of Web Trends about social media behavior and social media monitoring

The latest episode of social media coach radio takes on the thorny issue of whether follower size matters.

Here’s a recording of a talk I did on social media for non-profits.

Justin Kistner, of Webtrends, posted a brilliant article on the operations side of social media, looking at how businesses invest in and support utilizing social media. I left my own comment on small businesses, because his writing was mainly focused on medium or large businesses, which have a marketing budget and can afford to hire a social media person or department to maintain their social media presence. Below is my comment, with some further commentary for small businesses:

Speaking as a person who works with small businesses, who usually only have either themselves or one or two other people to rely upon the total infrastructure of the business, what I usually see is less of an investment of money, and more of an investment of time and exploring automation options with social media while still maintaining a viable presence on social media.

That said your model still applies to those small businesses. They still need to train either themselves or someone else. They still need to have a business process that describes how they will use social media and integrate into the rest of their business, and they also need some infrastructure, though a lot of that can be found in the various methods of automating social media available to them.

Usually the staff for a small business is the business owner or an employee who manages the social media presence part time, while also doing other work related duties. They need to be trained, but also have limited time to use social media, and will  tend to want to use automation options to manage their time on social media sites further.

Small businesses do need to define their business and marketing processes for using social media. Going in without a clear understanding of how social media can benefit the business as well as what social media to use can really hamstring a business that wants to connect with people online. A small business will need to devise a strategy and process for responses, publishing of material, measurement, promotion, and even automation (in terms of what is automated and why). Achieving clarity on the business policies for using social media will enhance how small businesses integrate it into their marketing efforts and business infrastructure, but small businesses also need to factor in the time element more than a company such as Intel (which has a social media department) will.

In developing processes around how social media is used in a small business, the infrastructure, i.e. where the automation occurs, also needs to be considered. What tools and applications will a small business use and how will those tools and applications benefit the small business in terms of connection with clients, but also management of social media resources? What social networking sites will a business want to be on and why? As a small business develops their social media infrastructure, they’ll find it gets easier to integrate it into what they do, but answering questions such as what I wrote above is essential for small businesses to create a plan that effectively uses social media.

My experience with businesses suggests that laying out this process ahead of jumping into the technology is essential for making it succeed for that business…and some form of investment, time or money, or both, is needed to make it work.