Ultimately businesses are looking at social media as an opportunity to increase revenue and if that’s your reason for using it then ensure that you build your strategies and activities to reach that goal. You also have to appreciate, when starting a campaign that’s core objective is to make money, that social media is all about engaging with your audience. If you think shouting about how fantastic your product is will suddenly drive people to love you, and part with their hard earned cash, you’re going to be disappointed.

The reason why, because social media is about a two way conversation and building loyalty and trust in your brand. The hard sales approach does not work and people will not respond to being told to buy your product just because you think it’s great. Social media offers a unique platform on which to engage with an audience, and it is through this engagement that relationships can be leveraged to enable the delivery of valuable (tangible or intangible) benefits.

There are the obvious and most immediate benefits…

• Driving direct online traffic.
• Letting customers know about new product ranges.
• Keeping customers up-to-date and informed.
• Boosting SEO.
• Getting testimonials / Reviews.
• Driving footfall and visits to the offline store.
• For PR and media opportunities.

…and then there are others such as…

• A filter for information.
• Collaboration and networking.
• Feedback / Surveys.
• Scoping out new opportunities.
• Product development.
• Branding.
• Customer service.
• Crisis management.
• Recruitment.

Statistics surrounding social media get more compelling by the year and the audience potential is huge. The ever increasing number of social media users is reason enough to get your business up and running but for those that are new to the social media landscape, it’s natural to be apprehensive. Concerns over relevancy, audience engagement, the best platforms to employ, cost and ROI are common but the best way to overcome these is to start researching the activity of relevant brands and your target audience.

There are clearly a few major players within social media and you could make a pretty safe assumption that you’ll find an audience, for your brand and social objectives, within at least one of them.

Social media is an exciting and interesting new route to connect with your customers and build brand awareness, and if you take this attitude and adhere to social media etiquette you’ll not be disappointed by the results you eventually achieve.

Add-on-Con ’09 ads and adblockers (closing keynote)

I recently happened across the above video from Add-on-Con ’09, in which representatives from Google, Opera and Mozilla briefly debate the role of ad-blockers. They raise the point that users who deliberately install ad-blocking extensions are among the least likely to be susceptible to online advertising, and will almost certainly refuse to use a browser that doesn’t allow the blocking of advertisements, when Firefox exists as an alternative.

Without exception

The reason I block adverts is because I find a large proportion of advertising intensely irritating (I really couldn’t care less about an American mom’s secret to whiter teeth!) and I would prefer to never see an online advert even if it means missing out on any that are relevant to me. Google seem to be optimistic in their capability to deliver ads people want to see, and that users (for the most part) will not block relevant adverts. The problem is that irritating adverts will always exist. Google could serve up the most relevant, targeted adverts and I’d still block them alongside all others.

A surprisingly small percentage of Web users are believed to actively block adverts and I can’t see Firefox blocking ads by default. There are just too many vested interests in online advertising, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing if the alternative is walled gardens and premium content. It will be interesting to see what happens as more Chrome users inevitably install the ad-blocker (two examples are already in the 5 most popular). Will we start to see Google advertising within the browser itself? Hard to imagine, as it would put many users off, but there may eventually be few alternatives.

Spam emailing hundreds of potential users might seem like a cost effective way of spreading a message, but people are wise to it these days, and most wouldn’t even open an email if they didn’t know the sender. Even then, some reports have estimated the energy needed to delete spam each year is equivalent to driving a car 1.6 million times around the earth.

Email communications, whilst fast and efficient are still a very one-sided way of contacting consumers. They’re really not up to the modern ‘conversation’ that the now ubiquitous social media sites, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr (etc) offer. And people really are using it, social media is now the most popular activity on the web and these channels mean you can talk directly to an individual and have them talk right back to you.

Targeting the right audience at the right time is an idea that the advertising and marketing industries have long been adopting. This article on ‘readwriteweb’ is a year old and it hits the nail on the head.

Social media has, over the past 10 years, made the world feel like a smaller place. It’s now possible for companies and brands to connect in a more open, honest and subsequently lasting way with their consumers, although as Skittles’ experience last year shows, there’s a big risk to opening yourself up to the general public. Social responsibility is such a buzz-phrase right now, but it is the only way to use new online channels successfully, users are too savvy to be hoodwinked for long and the consequences of trying it can be disastrous. Habitat attempted to jump on the social media bandwagon, but ended up using an automated system on Twitter and suffered a speedy backlash.

If it’s going to be done, it should be done right, or not at all. Companies who fail to maintain some basic standards of decency and transparency are damaging the whole marketing industry. Concerns over Facebook security and privacy and the sheer volume of data that Google have collected have already got some people panicking and when companies cynically manipulate things like this example, it’s no surprise people are wary of business’ true motives. The only solution is to embrace our social responsibility to the consumer and win them back through honesty and integrity.