Chief Marketer is one of my faves for reading about topics oriented to B-to-B social media marketing (what I do) and tips and tricks of the trade. A survey of brand marketers was just released, and I was invited to share feedback about responses by B-t0-B marketers and B-to-C marketers…we should all be saying B-to-P by now, eh?
The Chief Marketer 2012 Social Marketing Survey showed a number of interesting findings, and I detail a few in this quickie video of Soulati Media On The Street (taken with the iPhone 4S, holding the camera flipped my way and standing in my bright yellow and red kitchen — that was all for Michelle Quillin of New England Multimedia who just went smartphone on us!).
What I don’t detail is the following:
56% of brand marketers surveyed said social media is “complex to measure.”
Why is that? My question in response you’ll need to hear in the video, actually. (Heh.)
By a factor of 3, brand marketers said they would reduce engagement on Facebook next year (I sorta garbled that in the video, so I explain it better here).
This is fascinating, and I can leave it up to the Facebook marketers and trainers to determine a really smart answer, but here’s my deduction:
Facebook has made its own life complex and thus ours.
With 1 billion registered users (1/3 of the world’s population), the little U.S. company struggling on the stock market, is still trying to ace mobile. Along the way, it bought Instagram and then launched Camera (what’s the difference?), introduced Timelines and now Collections, has privacy issues and advertising data malarkey — no wonder the medium is complex for brand marketers still stuck measuring with likes and shares (that’s old).
LinkedIn remains a favorite for B-to-B marketers at 85% adoption while B-to-C marketers are only engaging there 39% (of respondents polled).
Google+ is a critical channel for local visibility and organic search, yet most of the marketers surveyed yawned at this medium. I encourage everyone to claim their brand identity!
If you want to see the really long version of my video (12 minutes), you can click here. Otherwise, take a peek with me right now:
Any thoughts, Friends?
This has been the 11th installment of Soulati Media On The Street! Thanks for watching!
Got bad news, you are clearly inside and not on the street. No wonder there is confusion. 😉
Metrics are funny and I think that one of the reasons FB is having so much trouble is they don’t have a uniform message about how to measure the marketing that takes place on their platform.
Zuck wants to play hacker/developer and isn’t as interested in providing the biz side with tools. That assessment isn’t based upon anything other than my gut impression, so I could be off.
@thejoshuawilner You’re not off! In fact, today’s WSJ shows the malcontent around Facebook’s “promoted posts” fees. Apparently, small businesses wanting to reach 1500 “likes/fans” would need to pay $9,100 annually to post 35 times to this community and reach them ALL. I can’t believe I didn’t know that…because as said, FB is not my fave medium. Thanks, Josh!
Oh good. I’m not the only one confused by Facebook… You summed it up nicely.
Good advice on Google+. It’s slowly growing on me. I like the way it’s not too obtrusive, and you can’t ignore the SEO benefits.
@barrettrossie What? A typo alert? Where? You need glasses, or what? thanks
@barrettrossie Facebook is a stinker…throwin’ curve balls all over the place for marketers and Big Data peeps.
OK, well, Miss Technology (I’m so glad you are, too!), I’ve had a smartphone for a couple of years, but it was a Nokia E71, and the apps were horrible, the video resolution horrific, and the memory measured in megabytes, so I only used it for non-business stuff. Now that I’ve joined the iPhone crowd, I’m so blown away by all the features, I realize that sometimes, saving money actually costs money! My goodness, I can’t believe the productivity I’ve missed out on! Cha-ching!
Now that we have that out of the way (heehee!), on to Facebook. I’ve had a pretty great experience with our Facebook Page over the last couple of years, but since the Timeline switch (not sure if there’s a connection), I’ve seen a huge, HUGE drop in engagement. This week I’ve been studying our insights, reach, virality of posts, what kinds of posts get the most engagement, the best time to post for our audience, etc., and there’s really no discernible pattern yet, other than we get the greatest reach — and it’s significantly greater — on posts between 8 an 10 am, with an occasional spike on an afternoon post. So yesterday I scheduled a post for between 8 and 10, and did the same this morning, and in both instances, the reach was cut in HALF from what I’ve seen in our insights. This is the first time I’ve scheduled posts on Facebook, so guess what I’m thinking now? Is scheduling of Facebook posts hampering reach? I’ll keep it up for a week and see what the results are.
Scheduling posts aside, our post reach across the board has dropped dramatically. If it continues, I may leave Facebook myself, or at least just post once a day to keep a presence there. I think what’s happened — just guessing here — is that the audience we want to reach on Facebook (owners of/marketers for businesses) have abandoned ship, and are spending the majority of their time elsewhere (Google+? Twitter? LinkedIn? Pinterest?).
I follow a few B2B folks who never went the Facebook Page route, but instead used a personal profile and have thousands of “friends.” I’ve noticed the engagement on their pages has fallen off dramatically as well. As we all know, user engagement with your profile or Page is what Facebook uses to measure EdgeRank, with EdgeRank being the indicator of who sees your updates and how often. So, even if people are reading your Facebook content, if they’re not engaging with it, you’re pretty much headed into a death spiral.
Another thought: is this huge drop in engagement as reflected in our Page insights all part of a campaign on the part of Facebook to force us to pay for promoted posts? That might work for Twitter, but I don’t think it’s ever going to fly for Facebook users. The two platforms appeal to very different crowds and audiences. Tomorrow I’ll watch your whole video and see what you’ve got to share from the survey! (I love your Soulati on the Street videos, Jayme — your personality is huge!)
@New England Multimedia Oh, boy…commenting on the last first. In the lower level with lighting in front of me using the iPad2 as video cam…Have not mastered iMovie…as Adam Toporek has said, it’s not intuitive at all. So, the oddity of that video watching it should be overcome by the content (I hope.).
Meanwhile, here’s Shashi Bellamkonda of Web.com with his video on the same survey (I’m forthcoming about having to use a cheat sheet for the data!).
https://chiefmarketer.com/social-marketing/video-comment-shashi-bellamkonda-cms-2012-social-marketing-survey
As per Facebook, I’d like to use your comments for a post…today’s WSJ, I alluded to below, has story about promoted posts. Others are having issues with Facebook in general; so with 1 billion registered users, it doesn’t matter…active users and satisfied business are what count.