Monthly Archives: September 2011
Social Media Jobs Getting More Plentiful
It’s no doubt that this was the year that most businesses, big and small, started to fully realize the potential behind social media. While no one is certain how many social media jobs exist, the number appears to continue growing. Whether called Community Moderators or Social Media Managers, these social employees are becoming more and more valued. In fact, “the number of social media-related jobs on Monster has surged 75% over the last year”.
While this article describes social media as “being at a cocktail party”, the reality of working in social is far more stressful than any cocktail party (depending on what friends are at said party). Since the social boom, many companies have introduced titles like “Social Ninja” and “Social Media Wizard” throughout their companies, but some professionals are expressing displeasure with these terms. Rightfully so. Social media is a serious industry of growing influence. With so many prospective employees seeking social media jobs, it is important to acknowledge the time and effort that goes into these roles. To get the ball rolling… they often have stakeholders in every corner of the organization and can be expected to work around the clock.
If you are a Social Media practitioner (or even a Social Media Ninja), we want to hear from you! Share how you feel about working in social for anyone interested in coming into the industry.
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We’ve asked our team to comment on the changes to Facebook announced at the F8 summit last week from the perspective of different disciplines. In this first installment, Leif Fescenmeyer (from our Insight & Planning group) looks at the implications for branded interactions and Scot Wheeler (from Marketing Science) discusses what, if any, changes to expect from Facebook insights.
Leif: Overall, I think the new Facebook interface has a lot going for it and at the same time, may have some hurdles besides the general distaste for change from users.
Brand Implications
It will be interesting to see how the new Newsfeed and realtime content Ticker will impact impressions and engagement on branded content from Pages. Already, we’ve noticed that impressions are no longer published on brand posts. How will “Top Posts” integrate branded content or will it at all? Will brands, in the future, be able to buy “Top Posts?” If branded content is not published as frequently or is secondary to Top Posts, will consumers and fans interact with brands as much as they did before? If so, how will brands prepare for decreased engagement?
News Feed and Ticker
The revamped Newsfeed and Ticker went over like a lead balloon with users, due perhaps to its unceremonious introduction. I’ve heard the Ticker called “a Facebook within a Facebook”–Inception style. It is and it isn’t. Read More
Facebook Unveils New Partnerships
One of the biggest pieces of social media news this week was the keynote speech made by Mark Zuckerberg at f8. Between describing the new profile timeline and announcing their new goal of having 1 billion users by the end of October, they announced a smattering of new partnerships. Among them were The Guardian and Vevo, but the two that garnered the most attention are most definitely Spotify and Netflix. The idea for both partnerships is to allow users to share their music and movies with friends. You can publish the song that you listen to on the way into work, or connect with friends over your favorite parts of your favorite movies. While the Netflix partnership will not first be released in the US, these are both worth while to keep an eye on. These partnerships are not only great advancements for Facebook, but they are a way for Facebook to announce that new and emerging medias are here to stay, so we had all better get onboard.
Rather than just friending one another and stalking your old high school sweetheart, Facebook is encouraging users to share more about their lives, while interacting with different types of media. While this will have massive implications for the 800 million people using the service, it will also have even bigger implications for the brands using it. For the brands that are using social media, it will be more important than ever to realize the impact that other medias. By engaging consumers through services like Spotify and Netflix in congruency with Facebook, brands will have a much more engaging campaign and a much higher chance of snagging the consumers attention.
Two prior posts on this blog have discussed digital experience optimization and methods for appropriately attributing across distributed digital touch-points. Among these touch-points, social media is becoming a significant focus for many businesses, so this post examines how measurement of social media should align with the digital experience delivery process.
Social Media ROI
The previous post in this series addressed how appropriate attribution is essential for establishing accurate ROI for communication though various channels. I’ll pick up again on ROI with this post since this is a strong area of general interest right now. (In fact, I presented on this last week, and have another presentation on the topic this week as part of Social Media Week).
A fact of ROI is that while the formula is simple, the variables can get complicated when multiple investments contribute to a single measured return (i.e. social media’s role in the attribution question) or when a single investment contributes to multiple measured outcomes (potentially as in the social media diagram above), or when the outcomes of an investment are difficult to quantify (as in most “returns” from social media). Unfortunately, any of these can come to bear in measuring social media ROI.
Social Media Outcomes
Since the amount invested in a social media program is usually front-of-mind to management, an important area for clarity is usually the definition of (quantifiable) outcomes. The diagram above aligns key measureable social media outcomes with stages in the digital experience delivery process.
FBI Investigating NBC Twitter Hack
This past weekend, 9/11 chatter online was almost inescapable. The memories were on everyone’s minds, and the Internet became a common space to share experiences. But NBC had a different issue on their mind. Their Twitter account was hacked Friday and was falsely reporting attacks at ground zero.
The group responsible for the hacking, The Script Kiddies, is an offshoot of hacker group Anonymous and this is not their first offense. The “Kiddies” are also responsible for the Fox News hacking in July, which falsely reported President Obama’s death. The FBI is now investigating the case but with the nation’s increased attention to news last week, the hack was very widely publicized. It caused panic and confusion when it first happened, and in turn, anger and shock when uncovered as a hack. It has also brought up the issue of crisis management in social media yet again. Shortly after the hack occurred, the NBC News account was deactivated by Twitter, as was The Script Kiddies.
Crisis management in social media is a widely discussed issue, because frankly, every community moderator has dealt with it. Every community can get a little sticky at times. On the smallest level, a moderator must jump to action to appease an upset community member at any time. On the largest scale, it’s important to know what to do if your account were to get hacked like NBC.
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Recently, pundits have been taking swipes at Google+, dismissing it as another stumble into the social space, tugging back at the coattails of Facebook, the established juggernaut in the social space with over 165 million users. But as the new player in the social space, Google+ might have one up on the established Facebook juggernaut.
Exploding growth
Receiving my Google+ invite at the launch of Google’s new social endeavor was reminiscent of 2004 Facebook–new ideas fueling a radical departure from established tools. The “what do I do with this” questions people are asking about Google+ are the same questions people had for Facebook when it debuted. It took Facebook ten months to cross the 1 million user mark, a feat Google Plus destroyed when it crossed 20 million users just weeks after its invite-only debut. I’ll be the first to admit that a lot of this growth is thanks to networks like Facebook that have brought social channels into the mainstream.
The New Sharing Model
But critics who don’t feel Google+ is a valid destination for a number of people suffering from Facebook Fatigue, the frustration of spam, privacy issues, distant acquaintances and family all congregating on the same platform with a very flat interaction model. Wading through the myriad of privacy options, your online persona must mingle with with your great aunt, 8th grade crush and supervisor’s supervisor, but fundamentally Facebook was designed as a social platform for a group of college friends sharing experiences at a four year college.
This is where Google+ really shines. Instead of a static friend/no friend state, Google’s circles solution lets you choose exactly who you’re sharing each piece of content with. Other options relating to profile, location and photo privacy are clearly labeled, and I hope this leads to greater transparency- and Facebook has already responded with clearer sharing options, although the labyrinth of privacy settings still remain.
