“What If I Were to Tell You?”
What if I were to tell you that 43% of America’s fortune 500 companies aggressively use social media as a primary marketing tool, and that most of the others plan to do so soon?
What if I were to tell you about a friend of mine who recently resigned a multi-year post as head of a broadcast conglomerate’s advertising sales force. The primary stated reason…the inroads Social Media has made on his market share for advertising dollars.
“Help Me Understand Social Media?”
You must see the hidden element. Until you see the hidden element, you may resist the abrupt change we are seeing. However, when you see the hidden element, you will most likely embrace the change and sprint to get in on it. What is the hidden element? It is simply this: the place people put their trust is changing.
It plays out in two ways.
1. Sandy asks for and trust the recommendations of her friends (people whose faces she trusts). She connects with these friends off line and on hundreds of different social networks, the largest being Facebook.
2. Wayne trusts a company that will show its face. The old mindset was to promote one’s professionalism. That Is what brand building was all about. Today it’s more about portraying the heart of the people behind the brand. Wayne wants professionalism with a face he can trust.
To market well, convey face. To convey face, tell stories
“Formal Story, Informal Story”
t’s 1946. Most of the town’s business was situated around the town square. Mr. Furniture Store, Mr. Dentist, Mister Barber, Mister Undertaker (usually around the corner a short distance from the square). Even though it wasn’t in town center, people were still dying to get in there. Sorry.
There was Mr. Drug Store with the soda bar…root beer floats in frosty copper mugs. This, incidentally, was the casual meeting place for all the others. You’d find a Mr. Editor and the town rag on every square. He provided the formal story, fixed in print, like the story he wrote and printed, with picture, about Mr. Furniture Store’s son just back from war.
The informal story streamed day in and day out. It was told in the status reports–conversations at the soda bar. Mr. Auto Dealer comments on how things are popping at his place this month. Furniture registers that the truck is two hours late with Mrs. Jones’s sofa. Barber jokes about how Dentist has been down in the mouth all day and when the preacher walks in all the cussing stops. No one had a logo. The Barber’s face was his logo. Today we need logos, but it’s the face behind the logo that matters to Harry and Helen.
The informal story, for most people, went away as population migrated to cities, but a human longing for it never did go away. Today, technology has given us back the informal story and human beings are taking to it as though they were born with a need for it. That’s because we were. We also need the formal story in print or video. It deepens our grasp of face and builds trust.
“How the Fan Page Works”
The Facebook Fan Page How does it work? To understand takes a little imagination.
It’s like the grandfather who shows his grandson an apple seed and asks what he sees. The grandson says with question marks in his eyes, “Grandpa, I see a seed”? The grandfather says, “There is something hidden in this seed that you can see if you use your imagination.” After a silent moment he said, “Son, when I look at this apple seed, I see an apple orchard.”
In the same way, the value of a Fan Page will appear only to someone who can see the hidden element that’s in it.
Let’s say your business has a Facebook Fan Page and you have one fan. You have JUST ONE FAN!!!Not to worry. On the average she has 130 Facebook friends. So, you are already connected to 130 people through her.
What Can You Do and What WILL Happen?”
1. First you can have a conversation with your fan about what’s on her mind and about stuff that’s on yours. Remember, this is hypothetical and it is in the public space. We are using a one fan example to demonstrate the power of the fan page. Also, watch for the hint of strategy in this scenario.
2. First, don’t try to sell her something, just be interesting, funny, or helpful. Find out your fan’s hot topics and give her some information about that topic she doesn’t have. You are building a person to person relationship which is far more powerful than just a brand.
3. Next, let’s suppose you learn that your fan has just had a picture published in Arizona Highways. You can celebrate her accomplishment . You can invite her to upload one of her pictures to your fan page. Suggest she add a picture of herself showing the issue to a group of her friends and they’re going crazy.
4. She does. Suddenly you have 26 fans. The six friends in the picture have become fans and twenty of the 130 friends on her personal account have joined your page to see what the fuss is all about. Now you are connected, not to 130 fans, but 26 times 130 people. That’s 2990 people. Chill bump warning. When these 26 people joined your page, all 2990 people were notified. Immediately, a few of them will also join.