Companies are using social media sites very poorly. Their main problem is they are throwing money at a situation they don’t really understand and believe that presence will equivocate to utilization. They can’t possibly be more wrong. For example, you see many companies with “like” pages on facebook that allow people to access different types of information, mostly some promotions, and maybe information about their products. A great example of how this doesn’t work is the AICPA site on facebook. The idea behind it may have been to push a more presentable face to the public. Instead, it draws a large group of angry CPA testers that vent out their frustrations on their wall. Something to take note of is that even on facebook and especially on sites like youtube, the lingo completely changes. People are not afraid to say exactly what they are thinking and even push the envelopes behind the wall of their computer. The internet has harsher reviews and critics than any other source, and a much larger source of them too.
I have never actually seen any company use a social media site well. It’s very interesting the approaches they usually take and they all fail dismally. Many companies bombard the website with ads hoping to draw users to them, but the fact is that the users are there for the social aspect and without a social ship to jump onto; they will not leave the ship they already are on. Another approach I have seen, is for companies to get their workers to try to rope in their friends into liking their website in some sort of bizarre hope that this will start a tidal wave of conversions. This does not work. It smells so much like a pyramid scheme, it really doesn’t even go as far as the employee’s friends. There is actually a prevalent behavior trait on facebook that rejects this. Basically, whoever is a friend that bombards other friends with too many ads and promotions is likely to be defriended. Users are very wary of this behavior having already seen the abuse of chain mails on emails. They will reject this kind of push very quickly and will resent this kind of behavior, enough to hack a virtual friendship.
The use of social media sites to draw consumers needs to be done very interactively. The competition is fierce for the users attention, every company needs to realize, it’s not like at a store where you’re only competing with other brands on the shelves that are next to your product, you are competing for the fleeting attention of a consumer that can be drawn away by a number of entertainment available to them on the internet from online games to youtube. This means that companies have the arduous task of building an entertaining website or application or interactive page on facebook for consumers to access. Much like how people go into stores to buy things, most people are online for an information hunt and capitalizing on the entertainment factor could help them compete with what is already out there. Websites like facebook and youtube blew up for just those reasons. They didn’t offer superior information, but far more entertaining more consistent streams of content that drew crowds.
Groundswell talks extensively about the threat to institutions these social network sites pose and in a way the companies can take a lesson from this writing. This is an area where they will be losing total control over content and are going to be held accountable by some fearsome critics that hold sway over many other users. The reason for the trust available in these communities is because there is no institutional presence, or the people themselves are the institution, the people reading the content do not believe that there is any ulterior motive other than pure presentation and promotion of the information or topic that they seek. The very existence of an institution in these areas is a contradiction of its very spirit. The institutions really have no choice but to become applicable at a personal level for their users. If you are unable to access that kind of depth, you will never be able to gain the trust of consumers. It’s much like the way that teenagers resent their mothers becoming their friends on facebook, it is an unwanted presence and facebook has already had to be careful about its presentation after witnessing the failure of other websites like xanga or myspace that allowed companies to entrench too far into the user’s territory.
A final suggestion for companies to hold themselves accountable for their products or services and embrace what is said or going on online. For example, on yelp, word gets around about companies that message users that have highly criticized a restaurant for a bad experience and try to make things right. This is actually a cheaper way for companies to see their ratings and measure customer satisfaction and also to address customer service issues quickly and efficiently. For example, iphones have a lot of problems, and the moment mine did, I didn’t call apple, I went online and looked at forums that posted solutions that actually worked, and never did apple have to be involved in the process. Companies also need to realize the current way they are going about their promotions on facebook is the exact same way they market on television and on flyers and keeping the old strategy for such a new medium is a horrible costly mistake. It is not only not helping, it is definitely hurting. It is pathetic for companies to reference their facebook website on their television ads, and they cannot offer anything better than a buy one get one free offer if you like their facebook page. Companies need to be reaching deeper, this is a great time to begin to see into consumer insights otherwise unavailable, but they must be subtle about it, or so brash that they won’t earn the mistrust of the social media users.
