A shorter version of this column originally appeared in Ian Fenwick’s digimarketing column in the Bangkok Post, March 17, 2010.

Although those words originally related to the British Empire, they are now in fact far more applicable to Facebook! Over 400 million people are now accessing Facebook each month: 100 million of them from mobile devices.  As I mentioned in my last column, Thailand is scoring double digit growth in Facebook usage and is regularly amongst the fastest growing Facebook markets in the world.

Social networks are already too large for marketers to ignore. In the US, it’s estimated that nearly one-fifth of marketing dollars will go on social media within five years.  More and more clients are asking for advice on how they to go about marketing on social networks. For me, one word springs to mind: carefully!

Marketers need to fit into an environment which was not created for them: they are guests not residents. People don’t go to social networks to be marketed at. Unlike traditional media, they don’t even go there to be talked at. They go there to communicate with others: to share experiences, photographs, anecdotes, and useful (to them) information.

At social network sites people interact with each other. They both consume and create content, and find both processes useful and fun. Unlike the traditional media’s soap operas, the content of social networks was not created to facilitate marketing: it was intended to serve a more useful purpose!

Consumer created content

Just look at the distribution of content on Facebook. Facebook claim that 50% of their 400 million active members log on in any given day. They make 60 million status updates (answers to the question: “What’s on your mind?”) each day.  They upload over 3 billion photographs each month, and share over 5 billion pieces of content. These consumer-created content stats dwarf the 3 million active Facebook Pages (often called Fan Pages), which are the main lairs of active Facebook marketers.

The most important thing for a marketer to do initially in social networks is to listen. To try and understand the rules of engagement on a group or page. What are the issues that are being discussed? What is the dominant tone? Are opinions expressed forcefully or gently? Are most posts short, fact-filled with links? or long, opinionated and discursive? It’s important that the marketer fits in to the discussions. What games and applications (apps) are you likely consumers using?

Make sure participants benefit

Remember consumers come to social network sites to swap useful information. What exactly do you have to share? Most marketers want to get to the pitch, the call-to-action. Social networks are not 15-second commercials. They are extended conversations. The average Facebook user is on the site for 55 minutes a day.

The marketers’ challenge is how to work with all that participation to make their brands an integral part of consumers lives. We don’t really know how to do this effectively all the time: best practice is still developing, new skills are still being learned.

What’s already clear is that authenticity of tone is very important. For this reason many companies are looking beyond their marketing departments to find their brands’ social media advocates. Professional marketers, it seems, are not always prized for their honesty and plain-speaking. Other employees, working within their spheres of knowledge and expertise, may provide more relevant and high-benefit information, and inject a more human element into the conversation.

Comcast

Business Week called Frank Eliason’ “Comcast’s Twitter Man”.  For the past couple of years, Frank has become famous for listening to customers and dealing with their service problems, via internet media, primarily Twitter. His official title is actually Director of Digital Care. That title conveys well the style that is needed in social media.

As the largest cable TV provider in the US, Comcast generates its share of customer service problems. Before venturing into social media conversations, Frank monitored Comcast-related comments for 2 months. His Twittering team now has 10 members. And it works: Comcast’s independently measured customer satisfaction ranking rose 9% the one quarter, the largest gain among cable and satellite providers.

As well as responding to customer complaints in real-time (which by itself placates irate customers), complaints have become a vital channel of market research. If a company can understand what has gone wrong, they have a chance of understanding why it went wrong, and fixing the system to prevent that error recurring.

Exactly what social networks were designed for: to learn from each other.

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