Started last year by Jeremiah Owyang, every 4th Monday of January “celebrates the efforts community managers do around the world to improve customer experiences”.
Community Managers don’t always get the credit they deserve, doing a silent, hard work, with the credits going to whoever is the public figure for the brand. We should recognize their role more often, beyond the usual pat in the back, but for a start, a Community Manager Appreciation Day it’s a good idea (Twitter hasthag is #CMAD).
The sheer amount of pressure and personal involvment is hard, not to mention the regular trolls they have to put up with. On this day, i recognize some of my friends and co-workers in Portugal that are doing a great job managing their communities:
One of my favorite bloggers, Jonathan MacDonald, has a regular category on the subject of fallacies. While not half as smart, I’ll try to write about a question posted on Quora, a common trap some marketers are prone to believe in: that what matters on Facebook is the number of fans (or more awkwardly, likes).
Let’s start with a selected quote by someone (video below for RSS readers) who knows a bit about these things:
“It’s worthless to have a lot of friends on Facebook, because they’re not really your friends. They’re just people who don’t want to offend you by pressing the ignore button” — Seth Godin
For Facebook Pages, with a low friction to press the Like button, a brand can easily create the illusion that fans = consumers = sales. If you think that makes sense, better choose other career than marketing. And don’t even consider mentioning that PR stunt about the value of a Facebook fan.
“If numbers are your strategy to win at this thing, you’ve already lost. This thing is not a game. There is no winning. There is only mattering. If you don’t understand that, you aren’t making a difference.” — Jeffrey Zeldman
Zeldman puts it best, it’s the relationship that matters. The amount of influence you can have on your fans, the power to affect their behavior, and ultimately drive their purchase intentions, are achieved when you care about your fans and not by a shallow, quick fix numbers race.
With Facebook reaching over 3 million users in Portugal, it’s increasingly important to understand how users perceive brands on Facebook. Research company Netsonda has just released their 2nd study Face to Facebook, with some new data regarding portuguese users:
More than half (58%) of users “liked” brand pages to receive regular updates;
Over 2/3 of users visit liked brand pages;
91% of users trust brand pages they “Like”;
78% of users visit Facebook at least once a day;
58,2% of users spend more than 1h per day on Facebook.
Worthy of notice, the fact that non-profits are amongst the favorites, with brand or product pages attracting 55% of users (a considerable increase from 37% back in June).
P.S.: Apologies for not too much time lately to post relevant content. Regular schedule will resume next December, after finishing my classes at Restart.
Spanish streetwear brand Desigual launched their new campaign at DesigualHappyHunters.com, based around the concept of digital happiness flashmob.
And instead of jumping on the Facebook-Twitter bandwagon, it’s all about blogs and comments, sharing a happy reply on a participant blog to win your chosen item.
Facebook Places launched last week, exploring their big chunk of mobile users, while establishing a weird sort of coo-petition with location startups GoWalla and Foursquare.
In a worrisome pattern for Facebook the usual backlash followed, again regarding privacy concerns. This time they got it half-right, by sharing location check-ins only to friends (and not everyone), but the big concern seems to be about the tagging. Facebook Places lets your tag you by default, but doesn’t offer any opt-in. Why is this troublesome? Let me give you an example:
- You go out with a few friends for a boys night out
- Your girlfriend stays at home, finishing some late report
- One of your friends checks-in at the restaurant. Your girlfriend likes the status on Facebook.
- After a few drinks at the bar/restaurant, one of your friends decides to check-in at the strip bar next door, even if you’re all heading home.
Well, good luck giving a reasonable explanation to your girlfriend. Even if you can remove the tag later, the harm is done.
Yes, i know they could do the same on Twitter, but there’s a big difference: On Facebook, your status becomes instantly visible, while on Twitter one has to perform a direct search, which requires a lot more effort (aka stalking). Furthermore, you might not be pleased at all to know there’s no full opt-out feature from Places.
It’s only the poster, but a sign of things to come on the upcoming David Fincher movie of young Zuckerberg and his 500 million nation, loosely based on Ben Mezrich’s novel titled The Accidental Billionaires, premiering next October.
Facebook will never be the same. (insert cheesy movie line here)
