Some Advice About Facebook for Big Companies

Yesterday, social media maven Chris Brogan talked to my Persuasion and Public Opinion class about his experiences with companies who come to him for public relations and marketing solutions.

He touched on what those of us studying social media and web-based platforms already know: that as much as companies hear how important it is to utilize these inexpensive tools, most feel the need to offer a “we’re very traditional” disclaimer.

Internet natives forget that Internet immigrants exist.  We weren’t born with an understanding of the web–didn’t everyone learn together?  We are constantly reminded that this line of thought is irrelevant; even powers like Murdoch can reveal their ignorance of digital tools.

And now, some words about Facebook I’ve been itching to utter.

DEAR BUSINESSES,

First of all, humans do not inherently desire to become your friend or fan on Facebook.

Why do companies think that simply creating a business profile or group is worthwhile?  Do you really think we all want to become fans for no apparent reason, even if we enjoy using your products?  Think about your competition for attention on this platform.  Facebook users encounter such a multitude of advertisements, both traditional and nontraditional, that they often disregard these approaches before the page has time to finish loading.

So stop making your college intern ask all of his or her Facebook friends to become a fan of your business.

Goodness, someone is grasping at Krazy Straws.  It will only irritate potential audience members and probably induce judgement of your sheer stupidity and your staff for being so annoying and desperate.

Although small businesses that thrive on a locally-based clientele should try Facebook.

I work for an alternative therapy facility in Downtown Crossing.  While the massage therapy and acupuncture treatments are administered with healing in mind, about half of our patients are executives (think traders) and students alike working in high-stress environments.  In this company’s case, Facebook is handy because every client counts. This of course is not to say that larger companies do not work by this standard as well, but if I tell four of my friends, and two of them decide to come in and another passes the information on to her boyfriend, who has been looking to start this kind of therapy regimen, that’s three new patients.

The key to small business success with Facebook is the feeling of community and intimate, reciprocal relationships that it instills.  I will never feel connected to General Electric.  Even if I have enough faith in the company to make it the sole provider of my light bulbs, I will never feel that the company’s decision-makers care specifically about me.  That is not the kind of business that GE runs.  That doesn’t mean that I don’t respect GE–they have a lot of non-profit initiatives, cause branding, and the like.  But large-scale corporations do not belong on these sites.

Although large businesses THAT ACTUALLY HAVE SOMETHING TANGIBLE TO OFFER and that MARKET TO FACEBOOK’s AUDIENCES should try it.

Apple is a big company that has successfully lured college audiences (and anyone else who is interested) with the pull marketing offer of small business customer service.  The company’s Facebook fan page offers free playlist downloads on iTunes and other information and deals that make fans feel like insiders. We learn in sociology and psychology and health class and every other subject that a basic human need people experience is the desire to belong and feel included.  Just include them!

If you can give your audience a legitimate reason to explore your page, you can hook them–and this does not mean boring videos that no one cares about viewing, the creation of profiles for fictional characters that represent your products, or Facebook message blasts that users delete upon receival.

Although I mentioned it before, I think it’s important to reiterate that your product or service should be relevant to this platform.

I’d love to hear your comments and other suggestions for how to use Facebook effectively.

The Rise of the Real Mom–Research from Advertising Age

Adage just published a great white paper on its site that examines changes over 48 years in women’s roles and priorities and what these lifestyle transitions mean for the industry.

To What Extent Do Online Social Networks Help Prospective Professionals and Emerging Leaders Land Jobs to Skype Home About?

As an undergraduate student who has come of near-job-seeking age amidst the gentrification of web-based social networks to meet the needs of aspiring, driven professionals looking to connect and communicate, I regard these tools as integral elements in the “hire me!” campaign for which my contemporaries and I have been preparing.

We all know the value of an updated Linkedin profile, intuitive, relevant tweets, and a blog like the one you’re reading right now.  But what can we make of an ROI of use of these platforms for landing great jobs?  Indeed, this question is a crucial one for college seniors and seasoned professionals alike.

One of the big pull factors of these sites is that you never know who you might connect with next.  Another virtue is that they give back what you put into them.  Exploration and risk-taking proves effective when done appropriately.

What percentage of students are using these sites?  What portion of those that do use them have benefited from making connections?

To sate my curiosity, I will be conducting research for a study that will aim to understand the significance of forming relationships on these sites for an Economic Sociology class.  The study will survey Boston University undergraduate seniors to investigate their uses of internet networking sites and the likelihood of a student to use these networks for professional development and achievement.

The study will also reveal the proportion of these students that get job offers or that make connections that lead to career placement.  Although I tweet only a few times a week and try to blog once a week, Twitter has opened doors that, in my freshman year, I never would have expected even to be on the periphery of my circle of industry contacts; Linkedin has allowed me to spread the detailed word of my experience and aspirations.  I doubt my job and internship search would have been the same without these.

Currently, I am surveying students and analyzing related studies that examine job placement after graduation.  Unfortunately, I have yet to find studies on the relationships between social media tools and students.  I’ll publish the findings here when the study is complete.

Arnold’s Boston Creative Director Offers Insights into Advertising Industry

Earlier this week, Chris Edwards, the Creative Director at Arnold Worldwide’s Boston office,  described some industry trends and explained a typical day in the life of an advertising exec during a presentation to my Persuasion and Public Opinion class.

Edwards manages the creative teams for the office’s role in Arnold’s McDonald’s and Pearle Vision accounts.  McDonald’s is Arnold’s largest account.

Embarking upon his seventeen-year career at Arnold, he started as a junior writer.  Instead of jumping from firm to firm like most of his contemporaries, Edwards found a home at Arnold.

The advertising guru revealed some of the most significant trends in the industry:

TV is not DEAD

• Media buys in this sector still expensive
• Valuable audiences still paying attention to this medium
• Design and theoretical components of reality TV have been creeping into commercials

Camouflage is So In Right Now

• Ads being made to look like anything but
• Real people–rather than actors– used to aid the reality TV experience
• More unheard-of bands excited to make it big in commercials-the negative “sell-out” complex has given way to eagerness for exposure
• More bands and musical scores that sound like songs people want to download on platforms like iTunes

When asked about the stress of commercializing the creative process, Edwards assured the class that with practice, experience, and, most simply, time, it does get easier.  He prefers, as do many of his colleagues, to work in brainstorming groups to create a chain of ideas that lead to that eventually perfect pitch.

Here are some McDonald’s television commercials the creative director was contributed to:

That famous one featuring the McNugget beat-boxers

Billy Bass asking for the Filet o’ Fish:

Snuggie, Friends Face the Cold Shoulder

Just as I sat wondering if Snuggies would infiltrate the homemade Halloween costume market this year, I came across an Advertising Age article, “How Snuggie Got Left Out in the Cold for TV time,” that discussed the narrowing outlet for TV commercials featuring direct-response products like this blanket with sleeves.

Because broadcasting execs overestimated the lack of demand the downturn would bring about, bigger names with bigger wallets have been snapping up the less desirable spots these DRTV marketers are used to purchasing.

“The tightening is a result of some established advertisers adding to their upfront buys, along with networks having to offer inventory as “make-goods” to make up for ratings shortfalls over the past years. Larry Novenstern, exec VP-director of national and local broadcast at Publicis Groupe’s Omnimedia called this “a combination of slightly reduced supply and slightly increased demand,” reported Advertising Age’s Jack Neff this week.

The President of Allstar Marketing Group, which works on the campaigns for Snuggie and other direct-response products, say this loss of the usual “leftovers” started in July 2009 and has continued surprisingly into the fourth quarter.

Last year, Snuggie launched with 60-120-second commercial spots–yet this year, the brand is competing for meager 15-30-second blocks.

Execs are relaxing now that media sellers are renegotiating their rates.  They say another shift is occuring–one that, hopefully, will bring some normalcy back to this arena by the first quarter of 2010.

Here is the longer commercial from 2008:

Economic Sociology Relevant for Marketers

My Economic Sociology class, which counters standard economic theory’s discussions of rational action, the maximizing motive, and non-embedded transactions, provokes analyses of consumer behavior and the stratification of market actors.

Here’s an interesting chart our professor offered to explain French economic sociologist Bourdieu’s classification of spending power, upward mobility, and tastes according to occupation (in the French system).

New York Magazine Suggests Words into Type

A peruse of the job postings on New York magazine’s website reveals an opening for a freelance copy editor!  The listing suggests that applicants be familiar with Words into Type, a proofreading manual I’m about to pick up.

Words into Type by Marjorie E. Skillin and Robert Malcolm Gay, from under $10-$65 on Amazon.

Words into Type 3rd Edition

Yes, it does look a bit archaic, but it’s been hailed by The Times and others since its 70s debut.

“Extra! Extra!” Some Say That’s All it is

In a recent New York Times Media Equation, titled “A Newsroom subsidized?  Minds Reel,” columnist David Carr discusses a report by the Columbia University Journalism School regarding the increasing fragility of newsrooms and print media.

“Fewer journalists are reporting less news in fewer pages, and the hegemony that near-monopoly metropolitan newspapers enjoyed during the last third of the 20th century, even as their primary audience eroded, is ending,” bellowed Dean Nicolas B. Lehmann in “The Reconstruction of American Journalism.”

Boy has that one ‘been a long time coming’…

Carr reported comments by industry leaders that alluded also to the irreplaceable nature of newsrooms and their productions in a refreshingly factual, rather than sentimental, manner:

“And the Internet philosophers who suggest that individuals posting on the Web are going to replace what newsrooms have been doing are not being realistic. We have to find new ways to maintain professional news-gathering capacity,” prophesied Leonard Downie, a Washington Post executive editor.

As a blogger, it is fascinating to hear some speak of unofficial civic journalist undertakings like my own as threatening alternatives to publications like The Washington Post and The New York Times.  I would be terrified if I were ever actually in the position to believe that a free, unregulated, unfiltered page could possibly displace the newspapers with which I grew up.

Those papers contributed to the person I am today; I submitted myself to whole-hearted trust in such publications, idealizing them with the same respect a child has for its idols before understanding their imperfections.

Though I obviously did not want to pay any more for a paper than the market demanded, I always thought the newspapers–evidence of our culture in every imagineable way–were absurdly underpriced.  I had a sense of the reasoning behind the pocket-change-price, but it was so sad from the view of an aspiring journalist to think that all of that hard work…that passion, investigation, stress, and diligence to dodge deadlines…was sold for under $2 a day and recycled by sun-up.

Whenever I can, I still try to read The New York Times and The Boston Globe in print.  Despite the seamless, streamlined appeal of the online editions of these papers, and the benefits of taking in more headlines in a shorter period of time, there is something so nostalgic about reading the print versions.  What made the front page?  It’s Wednesday, the Dining Out section’s about to fall out when I unfold the work of these unspoken of legends.

The big question now, of course, is how do we make web-based news literature commercially viable?  Perhaps we are just finding ourselves at the next stage of operational evolution, and as our society becomes increasingly simplified in this sense, there is less money to be made. Is that possible? they shudder.

Talk of paid-subscription-ONLY access to popular outlets becoming a reality in the near future frustrates me.  Such a transformation of web content would have to be treated so delicately, so strategically…I am not sure it is feasible.  I suppose if a majority of powerful titles decided that after a certain date they would all charge at competitive rates, it might be fathomable.  My reluctance to accept any change to the production of traditional print media may be keeping me a smidge close-minded.

But this is confusing…I thought that all the hoopla over the Internet when it first permeated our information consumption practices was the freedom it offered to users and creators alike.  Now we have to pay for content?

From a certain angle it seems almost unethical.  But this hardship is matched on the opposite side by lovers of print media.  Seems like the latter has been much more vocal than the former, though.

Is it likely that all of this technological advancement will eventually plateau in terms of pricing and proliferation?  In other words, might we end up reverting back to comfy print for magazines on our coffee tables and newspapers on our laps on the subway?

Conde Nast Magazines Cookie, Gourmet, Elegant Bride, and Modern Bride Fold

New York Magazine’s Daily Intel today relayed from Gawker that a slew of Conde Nast Publications have gone under.  The sad little list includes American family favorite Cookie and Gourmet, a 70-year-old food magazine.  Modern Bride and Elegant Bride will also fold into Brides.

First the 25% budget cut, now this.  Will Graydon Carter’s Monkey Bar reservation list take a hit as well?  Perish the thought.

The Wrath of McKinsey [Internal Memos] — Gawker

Book Review: Brightness Falls by Jay McInerney

Oh, pretty, preppy people and their problems.

…So I’m in the middle of Jay McInerney’s 1992 work Brightness Falls.  Since I was only 4 when the buzz of its entrance into the realm of modern who-the-hell-am-I fiction spread throughout the land, it’s taken me a bit to catch wind of it.

Eagerly pitted against “the man,” a young professor who taught a U.S. History: 1968-Present class I took one summer introduced me to the author with a mandatory analysis of one of McInerney’s earlier novels, Bright Lights, Big City.

Since that first bout of overzealous consumption, I have become entrenched and enveloped in the cultural significance of McInerney’s work.

Set in Manhattan during the booming 80s, Brightness Falls chronicles the constraints and strains of upper middle class life for its characters, whose thoughts and actions interact to create a rich microcosm of everything that was so wrong and so right with the time period.

The central characters include Russell Calloway, a writer facing growing unhappiness with his static career at a publishing house, stock broker Corrine Calloway — Russell’s wife and compatriot in a coup against the pitfalls of conventional unions — and various hysterical, sinuous, biting, and idealizing characters with whom they associate.

A crucial ingredient to the madness these people face is the parallelization of the city’s contrasting literary and financial worlds.  Artistic freedom and the value of a work for society grow irrelevant as M & A executives keep looking up for a ceiling.  To see such typically opposing worlds united is a treat and a testament to the cultural sphere on which the story is based.

What we can learn: the paradox of satiety is a funny thing.

Expect some tidbits from a collection of New York magazine’s most memorable contributions to come soon.