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Society of Change
You know I love my social networking . I get to stay up on all the new babies in the family while seeing Aristotle clients connect with customers and new markets through their strategic SN efforts! However, these social networks are having difficulty deciding what rules to follow, much less how they will create a sustainable business model to get in the black.
Part of their identification crisis is because they are beset by competition as more and more new kids come on the block. Not only are there tons of geographic/language social networks, but there are social network applications like www.Ning.com that allow people to create their own mini-social networks. Already, many of these Ning.com communities are not so mini.
So, here are some tips for dealing with the shifting sands.
On Facebook, read the small messages that appear on your own profile page. Many of you missed the opportunity to get facebook.com/yourusername because you did not see the small message and link to get your name. For personal profiles, you can still register our username at www.facebook.com/username.
It got very complicated when Facebook tried to establish rules for businesses to get their usernames for their fan pages. Facebook made an announcement on one day that they were opening up registration for fan page names if businesses had 25 fans, then the next day changed the date registration would open up AND the number of fans needed! To stay up on these changes, you need a consultant like Aristotle, or you need to invest time into reading blogs and posts about the changing rules.
All of the confusion Facebook caused by announcing rules and then changing them and changing them again, caused many of us to re-think the role we want Facebook to have in our future customer communications. We can’t abandon Facebook, but we can diminish the impact of Facebook’s tendency to make sweeping changes with virtually no notice. We have to. Nothing is more important than our communication with our customers. As much as possible, we have to bring as much of our customer communication into our own websites. This involves maintaining a strategy that uses networks not only to reach out, but to build two-way relationships on our sites with dialogue tools like commenting, ranking and sharing.
YouTube is developing a new feature to let us customize our YouTube channels as never before. We can turn our YouTube channel into a mini-website with links to our existing site. This is an effort to combat the tendency for people to build their own mini YouTubes on their own sites. Now you won’t have to. If you have a YouTube channel, your design can have built-in calls to action. To really get the best out of this new feature on YouTube, you have to be sure though that your videos are easily searched in this super video search engine (another service that Aristotle offers).
It’s quite amazing to me how all the developers creating auxiliary Twitter apps are changing the uses of Twitter. There are many new search tools that allow us to better “listen” to the chatter we care about. There are tools to connect Twitter with better mapping and following threads of discussion. Tools allow us to load up and cue messages for timed release. It all makes the marketing strategist’s head turn! I believe the key to staying on top of the power of Twitter is to read the blogs and news about new Twitter apps.
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Spam, advertising and creating special rules or deals for businesses within network are all in a state of flux. With each social network, there are more tools for spamming. How many of you have to block Twitter followers promoting their sexy selves? I’m doing it almost daily now. How many of you women over 40 are tired of seeing Botox ads on Facebook? How many of you feel creepy when you make a post about your Caribbean cruise and suddenly start seeing cruise line ads?
We’ve learned to expect change, most of which is negative. We all moved from MySpace to Facebook, fleeing the onslaught of ads and unwanted eyes. MySpace is now streamlining their interface and making better use of email updates while Facebook is feeling more cluttered these days. Each network has a foundation of creating amazing free value for us, but now they need to figure out how to get someone to pay for it without ruining it. The constant need for substantial investment in their networks is evidenced by how the success of social networks took them down when there was violence in Iran or news of the death of Michael Jackson.
So my final piece of advice on staying above the fray if you are involved with this fickle mistress? There was a very popular book a few years ago that my husband enjoyed moving each day to a new location in the house. I recommend you re-read the classic about living with change: Who Moved My Cheese?
;-) Marla
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