eric whelan

A new report from Constant Contact claims that 37% of small organisations who said they were using Facebook as a marketing tool don’t think it has helped them at all. No sales, no exposure, no extra traffic through the doors. And it’s not really surprising.

As a digital media trainer, the look of shock on trainees’ faces whenever I mention that I don’t think Facebook is that helpful in engaging new audiences never ceases to amuse me. Amongst the gasps and confused stares, someone always blurts out “then what are we here for?!” which is an understandable question. We constantly hear about how Facebook should be your number one tool for capturing new audiences, how it is a place to showcase the brilliant work you’re doing.

But that’s simply not true.

Recently I led a session training some very big-name organisations in using digital tools for corporate responsibility and this point came up again. While I’m sure some people in the room disagreed with me, I put forward that Facebook doesn’t offer you the tools to find and engage new audiences. You can’t search for topics that people are talking about. You can’t message people as an organisation. You definitely can’t drop in on interesting conversations to encourage users to talk about you or your services. You can’t even see the details of people that have Liked your page on Facebook anymore.

But you can with Twitter. The simple fact is that Twitter is a far superior tool for engaging audiences which is why it is seeing ever-growing engagement while engagement on Facebook seems to be stalling. You can search for topics that people are talking about. You can drop in on conversations and engage people that didn’t know you existed.

Facebook seems to finally have worked out what it’s trying to do. Early users will remember when it was a requirement that status updates began with “Joe Blogs is…”. Since the verb was removed in late 2007, we’ve seen Facebook focus more and more on what Joe Bloggs was doing. It’s no longer about what’s happening now; all Facebook cares about is what has already happened. We only need to look at Timeline – which was introduced earlier this year with an invitation to “tell your life story” – to see that Facebook is becoming somewhere to reminisce rather than reveal. The death of Facebook Places, which allowed users to tell their friends where they were at any given moment, is another sign of a shift in focus.

Digital marketing and community engagement is all about the here and now which is why Facebook marketing just isn’t working for the smaller businesses in Constant Contact’s report. It’s a great tool for talking to people who have chosen to connect with you but again, this goes back to something that has already happened. Chances are, these users are established customers so it’s no wonder these organisations aren’t seeing jumps in revenue; they’re preaching to the choir.

If they really want to grab the attention of new audiences, these companies will have to look elsewhere. Twitter is where people are talking about what’s happening now, what they’re interested and what they’re going to do in the future. These are the people that can be engaged and these are the people that you can entice through your doors.

We need to stop selling Facebook as the be-all and end-all of digital marketing. It’s a great tool - especially for established, high-profile brands - but it’s not going to give you the amazing results so many organisations are expecting.

Nokia and 1000 Heads, a rather brilliant word-of-moth marketing agency, have unveiled their project for Social Media Week, which takes place in Glasgow this week. 

The Nokia Gift Machine integrates with Foursquare, dropping out one of 1000 gifts when you check in to the machine. Prizes range from chocolate bars to the odd new phone.

I’d like to know how they’re going to stop people checking in several times to grab several gifts though. I’m sure they’ve some code written to prevent it, but it would be interesting to find out how many people actually attempt to do it.

The Nokia Gift Machine from 1000heads on Vimeo.

You probably heard the impressive news that information about the August 23rd earthquake was reaching people in New York via Twitter before the shockwaves had actually managed to reach the city itself.

What’s even more impressive is how quickly Twitter have decided to jump on that piece of information and use it to big up their service with this hilarious short video. It’s probably a bit insensitive but it’s little things like this that help reinforce Twitter’s friendly image.

If you’re looking to advertise to a large audience, anyone can go and buy ad space on Facebook (even if it is getting more and more expensive). Or you could try and hijack the comments on an already established brand’s page.

Today while checking out the HTC page on Facebook (which has over 700k followers), I came across this post and its attached comment:

I have to give it to “Mahnoor” and “Zeshaan”. This isn’t something that I’ve seen before. I’ve often come across very obvious links to spammy websites, trojans etc, but to try and hide their motives by having someone under another account responding is pretty brazen. The posts were added several hours apart too, another move to try and convince readers that it was indeed a real question and a genuine response.

There are a couple of things that gave it away; the language, the fact that neither of the posters have a genuine photo (which is rare enough on FB) and, of course, the fact that the question had nothing to do HTC or its products. But I can’t help but wonder if this approach would have seen a larger click-through than if the website had simply bought advertising space on the site.

By sending out mass tweets like this. It looks bad and while I understand the idea, copying and pasting messages like this would be an instant turn off if I visited your page.

I hate soulless auto DMs when you follow someone on Twitter, but at least they don’t fill up your public page like this.

Twitter is fantastic for getting information, spreading news and speaking to your audience. It’s also apparently great for letting potential customers know about your product, but this is something that I’ve not really seen working properly, except in one case where, at SoundDelivery, we managed to sell quite a few places on a training day through Twitter advertisement. Usually what I’ve come across is a company shouting about how fantastic their product or service is and how I HAVE to try it out, which usually doesn’t get a great reaction from me, least of all make me want to try their service.

However, the other day I was pleasantly surprised. I was developing an online questionnaire for SoundInnovation, the new, non-profit arm of SoundDelivery. I was finding Survey Monkey frustratingly limited in what it would allow me to do, so I reached out for suggestions for alternatives on Twitter.

I expected a follower or two to link me to a few places, but instead the response was somewhat more… targeted.

I was pretty impressed. The fact is, it’s so easy to find people who are seeking the service you offer through some simple searching, yet so many organisations miss out on this opportunity. Of the organisations that got in touch with me, I looked at all of their websites and ended up trying out one of them - and very good it was too. I became a potential customer because they had done a quick search on Twitter to find people that were mentioning online surveys.

What if they hadn’t been searching? None of these companies were following me when I got their messages,  and I’d never heard of any of them, so I probably wouldn’t have found them, and the one service that ended up suiting my needs would have lost out on a new customer.

Times are difficult and there are now a lot more organisations fighting for a shrinking customer base, so it’s vitally important to use any means you have at hand to get your name out there to new audiences. Why more organisations don’t think social media is a part of that is beyond me. 

When leading a training workshop on social media, I always encourage delegates to search Twitter and Social Mention to find what people are saying about their organisation. I don’t know how many of them do, but at least now I have a new story to show them why they should be.