Kerisma

According to Jason Clark’s new iMediaConnection article Why Twitter Will Soon Become Obsolete, he brings up a good point that I’ve also noticed with the evolution of online products and technology use in the social media space. We’ve seen it time and time again with sites such as Friendster, MySpace, Facebook and Twitter first popular with younger generations, but once the majority of mass audiences start taking notice and new forms of advertising and sponsorships take flight, there is a shift in interest for further use over time. As marketers grasp these new technologies for the promotion of products, it can proliferate making a site saturated with similar messages, rather than using the communication tools to better understand the audience and provide further customer service and community support.

As Jason states in his article and I agree, “the online community is hyper-sensitive to marketing tactics, and as soon as a social media marketing tool becomes spammy, it immediately becomes irrelevant. Test different media, but let’s not get caught up in just one. Twitter is not the final answer to social media marketing. Staying aware, good writing, and good communication will always be more important. Think “writing” instead of “blogging” or “tweeting.” Remember, what works for one market on Twitter, or some other social media platform, can’t always be applied to every business. Closely monitoring, testing and evaluating the responses are key to success. Make sure before you start to market your business in these spaces, you have a strategy with the proper individuals in place to manage the process.

Don’t Put Too Many Eggs in the Twitter Basket
I’ve seen some intrinsic value in Twitter and many other social media platforms, but honestly, I can see where it could be another short-lived trend. Jason predicts, “Twitter will find its social media and marketing niche, but I cannot see it being nearly as important as some marketers are making it out to be. The retention rate of Twitter is said to be only around 30 percent, which means seven out of 10 people try it out once and don’t come back.”

Crazy world in cyberspace it has become. Are these new forms of communication only to later become trends that fade away? My advice is to not put all your eggs in one basket, but take a diversified integrated approach to marketing your business. People seek real connections, as well as loathe being blatantly marketed products online with little value. First it was email spam and people were flagging to block certain emails and notify their email service provider. Next it was too much tweeting typed on and on from someone in the course of two minutes forcing one to block their responses. What’s next?

A new study in MediaPost’s Engage Teens eNewsletter promoted by Bill Cater, partner of FuseMarketing, highlights eMarketer’s research on the teen demographic and use of social media tools and attitudes toward advertising and sponsorships. “According to eMarketer, advertising on social networks was $1.2 billion in 2008, rising to $1.3 billion in 2009. However, the study also found that only 30% of teens have “friended” a brand on a social networking site. Additionally, over 60% had an unfavorable to neutral opinion of brands advertising on social networks.” Bill Carter provides additional advice to those that wish to reach teens on social media sites for “brands to invest in relevant, paid content that provides some type of added value to teens and then further investment to maintain/update that presence. Social network marketing tactics are not free! Invest in your content, keep it fresh, and success will follow.“

Big Brother, Big Business, Don’t Be Fooled By the Face Either
Well are you familiar with those quizzes on Facebook? Someone behind-the -scenes is tracking your every response, your likes, dislikes, and it’s not just your friends, but rather businesses looking to make a buck off your behavior. Soon there will be a rise of more marketing messages coming your way of products sometimes without your knowledge. You may not have control of those messages being distributed to you either. It could happen tomorrow, if it isn’t already appearing before your eyes today. Are you okay with that? Remember as digital mediums grow, so do the audiences’ understanding and their use of it. People are becoming more savvy with behaviorial marketing tactics and some are not happy with this approach. A good marketer has to be careful with their strategy and provide useful information, provide a way to reach out to the community in an honest manner, rather than push products down people’s throats, or use deceptive tactics to get people to “buy-in” to a specific promotion, program, product or service. Otherwise, in the long -term your audience will retaliate and take a negative approach to your business. Yet, this social media world is new to many marketers all learning what works best and unfortunately through the process some brands may suffer. Good customer service, being upfront with your audience and trustworthiness are important values to uphold.

What’s the Next Wave for Social Media?
As Facebook has gone through a few facelifts to enhance its features, some have complained it’s harder to navigate the site. The audience has not been too receptive to some changes. This past week the new personal URL was introduced for one to add their own name to a URL specific to his/her profile. Yet, in traditional Facebook style there was little or no clear communication to understand the importance and relevancy to what the new URL means. I hypothesized it would help to identify better someone in the organic search of one’s profile to appear close to the top of the search engine results page. At the same time, Facebook warns the user you will only have ONE TIME to create a personal URL and the one you want could be taken. You will NOT be able to change it ever again. As a participant of the site with a profile, what does this actually mean to my further use in the future, or others that wish to review my information? That’s poor customer service if I ever heard. Let’s threaten them, get them to buy into the concept, and make it imperative for others to hurry up before time is running out! Hey, maybe Facebook is actually looking to monetize this new approach by creating a bidding war for acquisition of certain URL’s at a later date? At that point, it could be too late to find out the purpose of this new personalized URL.  Shortly thereafter, or in due time, the audience could decide to abandon the site altogether, because they weren’t pleased and move onto the next Google Wave, or plan to surf the web for something else.

Read my previous thoughts and how it relates to this issue on are we Creating a Bunch of Followers or New Leaders?