THINK LIKE A FACEBOOK NATIVE

Facebook modified its EdgeRank Algorithm... Bad News?

Advertisers don't seem to be particularly happy about the change. Now that they were finally comfortable promoting their stories and cashing out on their hard earned likes, Zuckerberg's company changes the playing field and establishes new rules of engagement... how uncool... Why is Facebook doing this?

Facebook answer to that question is:

Surveys show that on average people prefer links to high quality articles about current events, their favorite sports team or shared interests, to the latest meme. Starting soon, we’ll be doing a better job of distinguishing between a high quality article on a website versus a meme photo hosted somewhere other than Facebook when people click on those stories on mobile. This means that high quality articles you or others read may show up a bit more prominently in your News Feed, and meme photos may show up a bit less prominently.

Apparently, Facebook has been conducting a series of surveys in order to finely tune up the way the algorithm perceives relevance for the audience in your updates. They presented users with different types of content and asked them the following:

• Is this timely and relevant content?
• Is this content from a source you would trust?
• Would you share it with friends or recommend it to others?
• Is the content genuinely interesting to you or is it trying to game News Feed distribution? (e.g., asking for people to like the content)
• Would you call this a low quality post or meme?
• Would you complain about seeing this content in your News Feed?

I have my issues regarding the survey design and results. I specially dislike the way the 5th question was presented. It categorizes the "meme" as low quality leading answers negatively about memes in the mind of the user. Somehow, I don't see a user answering honestly he or she prefers a funny meme over a well crafted article from a news organization, despite the fact that the former seem to be much more popular than  the latter, but I imagine Facebook has taken the shame factor into account interpreting the survey's results.

How is people reacting to the new algorithm?

Comments on FB Official Blog new algorythm's anouncement

Judging from comments in Facebook Official Blog, many suspect it's a matter of Facebook getting greedy. They think Facebook does not want companies to clutter people's newsfeeds with content unless is paid. And according to the comment of Nestor Carrasco, responsible for the fanpage "StarterDaily" the results of organic unpaid updates are dramatic: a decrease from 30% engagement to 2%.  Content that, up until today, made 30% of your fans engage, now gets only 2%. Less people exposed to the content turned into less people engaging.  If Facebook wanted engagement, reducing the number of people the content reaches does not seem logical... or does it?

My Opinion

Although Facebook usage is still growing, Facebook has seen a decrease in this growth. They want it back on high speed and they've figured out that engagement is key to recover velocity.

Engagement will keep users on Facebook, make them use it more, expend more time on it.  Take it from the perspective of a user: if your news feed keeps filling up with non engaging content, you'll look for it somewhere else. An engaging user is a person who goes from mere witness into action mode. From that point of view, brands should prefer this type of user over the other. Facebook wants to be a platform of engaging users because they know they have more value.

Turning non engaging users into engagement junkies is not a task Facebook can do alone. They want us marketers to step inside this "creating Mr Engager" scenario and add our 5 cents to the jar. In the long run, activating engagers is a desireable scenario for us too.

They made some recommendations alongside the anouncement:

• Make your posts timely and relevant
• Build credibility and trust with your audience
• Ask yourself, “Would people share this with their friends or recommend it to others?”
• Think about, “Would my audience want to see this in their News Feeds?”

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR BRANDS? 

1.What you consider important may not be what users find important.

Well, for once, it seems pretty obvious that Facebook does not encourage us to prioritize what we consider important over what users may consider important. That is a key factor to consider when we prepare our content. And don't only consider the essence of the content, notice the relevance of now. What is important for the users currently. Context Matters my friends.

2.Make "Engagement Trigger" Content

Shareability of your content seems to be important. Facebook prefers a message your followers would recommend to others, or even better, one they'd comment about, over content they may like but not feel in need to share. This presents some issues.

Imagine you are responsible for Viagra's Social Media Strategy. There is certainly a community of people interested in your content but... will they share it with others? Seeking shareability is undoubtely a challenge.

3.Make your content Facebook Native. Links may not work as they used to.

AllThingsD interviewed Lars Backstrom, Facebook's NewsFeed Manager, and he had some remarks that particularly caught my attention:

Q. Are you paying attention to the source of the content? Or is it solely the type of content?A. Right now, it’s mostly oriented around the source. As we refine our approaches, we’ll start distinguishing more and more between different types of content. But, for right now, when we think about how we identify “high quality,” it’s mostly at the source level.
Q. So something that comes from publisher X, you might consider high quality, and if it comes from publisher Y, it’s low quality?A. Yes.

It's yet to be determined what a high quality source by Facebook's algorithm standards is. Backstom's answer lead us to think that a vague article about cancer treatment from the New York Times would be considered of higher quality than the testimony of a cancer patient posted on his personal blog... I happen to disagree. But, since it's a factor, it may be better for us to create the content natively within Facebook, so outside links to what could be consider a not so high quality source weight less on the algorithm's criteria.

4.Value Facebook Users' interests as much as Facebook does

All the changes Facebook does to the algorithm have one purpose in mind, and it is not to make you pay to reach their users. Facebook wants to empower their users. They want them better informed, more engaging and active. They cherish the user because he is the main asset of their business. Facebook prioritizes a better user experience over a better marketer's one because users' enjoyment, not advertisers money, is Facebook's source of income. Advertisers will always come second, that is the way it has to be. A Facebook with a UI tailored for advertisers instead of for users is not valuable even for advertisers.

So, Facebook designs its algorithm trying to get into the mind of the Facebook Native. They want to mimic their thoughts, think like one, in order to give him or her what he or she wants. You should do exactly the same.

SEWING 2ND SCREEN STRATEGIES

What would you do to increase your sales by 135% overnight?

It happened by mere chance, but there are lessons to learn from the story I'm about to relate.

Antena3TV, a TV Channel from Spain, is broadcasting a series based on a bestselling novel. It tells the story of Sira, a young lady who earns a living sewing clothes in a tailor shop. The story runs in the 1930s, not the best time framework to explore the posibilities for current products' placement or other traditional media gimmicks. 4 episodes later the series is a big hit: 26% share, +5 million average viewers.  A rebump in sales of the book, as expected, took place everywhere...but something else happened: an unexpected 135% increase in sewing machines sales at Amazon.es

Not 35%... 135% increase, out of nowhere. Regular sales multiplied by 2.35.

Was this jump due to the TV Series? You bet it was! Sales at the unusual 10:00 to 24:00 time frame (the time the show is on) went up 124% in broadcasts days!  This experience would have been IMPOSSIBLE just a few years ago even with e-commerce sites like Amazon already present and running. Mobile makes the real difference. Consummers are watching TV shows alongside their smartphones and tablets.

There are, of course, market situations that helped this success. The economic crisis in spain is making more people refurbish their clothes or think about starting their own clothing repair businesses. But up untill the show started, sewing equipment sales were far from booming.

Buying habits are shifting from instore to online. Mobile was the piece missing to complete the e-commerce puzzle.You better get your company ready for this, or the opportunities will fly away from you, regardless on how good your product is.

What can we learn from this situation?

BEWARE OF THE 2ND SCREEN

Don't understimate the power of mobile. We're witnessing a cultural shift deeper than the one that made us switch from neighborhood small businesses to big stores and shopping malls. People are finding mobile shopping easier and more convenient than instore experiences.

IMPULSE BUYING IS A 24/7 HABIT

Who would have thought people would buy sewing machines on impulse? You better make your products available for sale 24/7 or sales will be missed.

MAKE YOUR PRODUCT AVAILABLE AT AMAZON

Amazon is not a single store. Is a conglomerate of different companies selling under the same umbrella. Opening an online store requires substantial effort and resources. Consider the possibility of selling through Amazon´s infrastructure.

SEIZE THE MOMENT

Evaluate events happening and to come. They may have hidden opportunities for unexpected sales you may take advantage from. Use Social media to newsjack.

BRAND AWARENESS MATTERS, BUT PRODUCT AVAILABILITY MATTERS MORE

Singer, the sewing machines' brand featured in the tv show, and probably the best positioned in the mind of the consumer, was the one making more sales, but there was a shortage of product at the Amazon.es store, and delivery dates for the Singer popular items started to push further in time. Numbers shown that people bought other brands prioritizing delivery dates over product choice.

Mobile means now. Consumers are getting smarter and once they make a decision, they want the chance to get instant gratification. Sew your strategy to the 2nd screen. Take advantage of it or your competitors will.

RED BULL: DON'T TARGET THE WALLET, TARGET THE HEART

In a recent podcast interview with Tessa Barrera, former Director of Social Media Strategy for Red Bull, she mentions that, in Social Media, it is far more important for Brands to focus on who you are instead of what you do. I cannot think of a better Social Media advise.

Companies focus too much on what they do, the products/services they sell. They push their content to the public the way they've done it for ages. They do not seem to understand the social shift markets have developed: the two ways scenario new platforms bring to the marketplace. One way communication is not dead yet, but it is decadent and anoying.

The traditional approach would've promoted an energy drink showing the product and its benefits. RedBull took another path. They understood what energy drinkers' lifestyle is about, what they enjoy. An Energy Drinker is an Adrenaline Junkie, a seeker of excitement that goes beyond replenishing electrolytes. Red Bull provides them with tailored content like no other: competition, extreme challenges, excitement. They don't ask you to buy their product. You don't see a sales pitch anywhere in their content. They associate the brand with all the activities that catch their potential consumer's attention: outstanding people doing amazing stuff. RedBull sponsors events that keep you in the edge. They give you emotions beyond ordinary: drama, adventure, passion, motivation, courage, thrill... And they use Social Media wisely. Monitoring what is being said about the brand, interacting with people, engaging in conversations. They truly understand how to be native socially.

What can we learn from RedBull's Social Media Strategy?

Don't Marginalize Social, Make it your Business

To give marginal importance to your Social Media Strategy is a clasical mistake that goes beyond my comprehension. In fact, if building custommer relationships means anything to your business, Social Media (community empowerment) should be the foundation of your business strategy. Period.

Red Bull does not see itself as a company that sales energy drinks. Nowadays, it's a powerful content provider for people who seek for extreme excitement and emotions, that happens to manufacture and sell an energy drink. Once they understood who they are, their strategy evolved around the concept.

Don't Ask, give

Red Bull seldomly asks to buy their product. They hardly ever show it. Instead, they give their audience exclusive content, using the language of Social Media: visual content. Videos and Pictures more than articles or typed posts. And they facilitate sharing.

Don't Manage, Empower Your Community

Besides amazing content, Red Bull gives their audience tools. Tools like Red Bull #TheShow initiative. An application that turns people's instagram pictures into a show to share.  They give them power, value, the hability to turn ordinary content into a visual experience.

Don't Target the Wallet, Target the Heart

Don't take me wrong, I'm pretty sure Red Bull's executives want to sell energy drinks and expect Return On their Investment. They simply take the Social Path to it. Red Bull does not focus on what they sell, they focus on who they are: a company that brings excitement to its advocates. Isn't that what an energy drink does? Why not focus on it? Don't sell the product, give an experience. Customers will associate the experience with the brand. The value of an emotional impact is worth much more than a sale. 

Take for instance, the Red Bull Stratos stunt. An austrian with an unpronounceable last name, was going to do something no one had ever done before. They created an event, carefully promoted on Social Networks to broadcast it live for a worldwide audience, making everyone witness history on the making.

Go Mobile

Red Bull uses Apps for smartphones. You can install the Red Bull TV App in your iphone, consume and share their content with your Social Networks. Free Smartphone games... you name it. They know the importance of mobile, and make the effort to be in your smartphone's screen.

Monitor your Brand Wisely, use Social Language Skills 

Content distribution is an important factor to put your brand on Social Networks, but it is not the only one. It's also a splendid tool to listen and monitor. People talk about your brand, and not always well. Reputation is an asset that has to be nurtured and cherished. Red Bulls pays attention to what people say about them, and acts with wonderfull finesse.

If an anonymous guy with 200 followers ironizes on twitter about "diying of cranberry red bull overdose", they don't ignore it, but they don't over react either. They respond using Social Media Tools: humour, irony and hard core facts.  Traditional companies would had either ignore or threaten the guy. Red Bull protects its reputation skillfully, improving it at the same time. Brilliant.

There is much to learn about Red Bull's Social media Strategies, but, as Tessa Barrera said, the key is to understand the importance of focusing on who you are, not on what you do. Keeping that in mind on each of the steps you take in Social, everything else will follow.

HOW TO GET $800,000 TO FUND YOUR WEBSERIES: SOCIAL MEDIA LESSONS FROM VGHS

Do you know what VGHS stands for?

You should.

Video Game High School is the most successful webseries of all times (as of March 2013): 36+ Million First Season views. 2nd season, with its +$800,000 fully funded budget, on the making.

 VGHS’ astonishing success got its producers a sweet deal contract with NETFLIX to make the webisodes available for their 33 Million paying subscribers. I don’t know about the figures of the deal, but considering the more than 36 million views of VGHS first season, it is safe to say both parties profit from it.

VGHS is the brainchild of C-List internet Celeb (as he describes himself) Freddie Wong, a 27 years old Asian American from Seattle, whom greatest achievement 5 years ago was being Guitar Hero Champion at the 2007's World Series of Video Games. I know what you’re thinking: another story of the geek who got lucky going viral online… There is a component of truth in that thought, but just a very tiny one.
   

LESSONS

Freddie Wong’s success has many lessons to learn from, and not just if we are interested in starting our own webseries.

• SHARE FIRST: Freddie’s success comes from putting hundreds of hours of his time available for everyone online. He is very passionate about VFX, Video Games and Video Production, and he found a way to combine the three in a very didactically entertaining way. He did not knock on big studios' doors asking for help.  To use the outrageously european artists way of demanding public funds to prove his talent, never crossed his mind. He just exposed his skills to the world.

• ADD VALUE: Freddie is probably not the best VFX artist in the business, he is a regular guy with a passion and he shares it. He not only does cool stuff, he shows you how he did it! The foundation of the success of his content lies on two pillars of value: Cool Entertainment, even cooler Education!

• BUILD A COMMUNITY: His YouTube channel is the 5th most subscribed channel in YouTube today because he cares. He listened, commented, and answered (many times in video mode) his audience questions and suggestions. He uploaded content regularly. He kept the audience expecting more, and he delivered.

• INVOLVE YOUR COMMUNITY INTO YOUR PROJECT: VGHS has been fully funded by “backers”: people “donating" money in exchange for cool exclusive goodies that go from mentions of their names in the official credits of the series; to merchandise like signed Headsets, coffee mugs, gaming chairs; ego boosters such as be a character that screams "Brian! Look out!" for a single shot in the official VGHS trailer; or just invitations to the production set. He called for involvement, his loyal,thankful, community answered.

• USE SOCIAL MEDIA TO FUND AND PROMOTE YOUR PROJECT: Wong did NOT spend a dime on Traditional Media Advertising. He posted a video explaining the project, used kickstarter.com, a funding platform for creative projects; posted on free content curator pages like reddit.com; used his twitter account to raise awareness and his fanbase did the rest. And they really showed up: Freddie was aiming for $75,000, they raised

$273,725 in one month!

No budget was assigned for promotion. They used only free Social Media Channels. All the money raised went into content production. He did not spend a single dime on traditional promotion channels.

I particularly like one way Freddie monetize his Social Media Capital:  the $9,001 pledge available for backers in exchange for one tweet.  An option available for just one pledger: Freddie will tweet whatever you want him to tweet on the @fwong Twitter account (more than 300,000 followers) at a time of your choosing. Sweet!

• MAKE YOUR CONTENT WIDELY AVAILABLE: Freddie did not cage the VGHS into his company's webpage. The content was open to everyone in YoutTube.  Each episode was open for everyone to embed it into their own blogs, share it easily through Social Media Channels, forums, Facebook pages, you name it. It certainly brought collateral traffic towards RocketJump.com . Wong's Production Company shows first on Google Search for VGHS. The content generated interest, the Community wanted additional goodies. Conversations lead to RocketJump's web, where the Company posted other content like podcasts, behind the scenes material, blogposts that kept the traffic flowing.

• ENCOURAGE PRODUCT PLACEMENT: VGHS was an excellent medium for gaming community sponsors to place their products. Headsets, PC peripherals, airsoft guns, energy drinks... fit like a glove within the content.

EXTRA BONUS RESULTS

I've already mention some of the accomplishments of VGHS webseries. 36 million viewers, Fully Funded Production, the Netflix Deal are amazing results, but I like to point out one more: Social Media Capital's Growth: Freddie's twitter account increased 50% (from 200,000 to +300,000) YouTube Subscribers more than double from 2 million to almost 5 million.

CONCLUSION

Before VGHS's success, Freddie Wong declared:

We strongly believe the foundations for the future of digitally distributed content will be laid by webseries. We don't see a webseries as a stepping stone to get a feature film project, or a TV deal - a good webseries is an end unto itself. The webseries format is uncharted territory, and we want to explore it.

Everything about Social Media Marketing these days seems to float around content. Audiences are not just people looking for entertainment, they are communities avid for content to share, interact with, and comment about. Marketing is not about selling stuff, is about building relationships (that would evolve into selling stuff...eventually). Could webseries be a content format to enable and encourage those relationships? You bet it can.

Webseries is a wonderful content format to generate conversations, wake up interest and build community. It has all the traditional media series advantages: periodicity, cliffhanger possibilities, plus the flexibility to generate interaction through enriched media features that are native online. VGHS is somehow atypical because a large base of its community was built before the project was even conceived, but the lessons it teach us are there to learn from.  Webseries are here to stay. What do you think?

WEEK IN TWEETS: SOCIAL MEDIA SUCCESS TIPS

Compressed Knowledge To Get You Thinking...

SocialMediaSuccess TipOfTheDay: Gangnam Style proved language is no longer a barrier for content: the only frontier is your imagination. — Aurelio Toral (@AurelioToral) 22 de febrero de 2013

SocialMedia TipOfTheDay: Google your name or content periodically, you'll be surprised (for good or bad) of the reach accomplished.
— Aurelio Toral (@AurelioToral) 21 de febrero de 2013

SocialMedia TipOfTheDay: your audience's HEAD GUT HEART or SOUL? ... think about which of your audiences feature your content targets to.
— Aurelio Toral (@AurelioToral) 20 de febrero de 2013

Social Media Success TipOfTheDay: Old Media Audiences: EYES and EARS... NewMedia Audiences: MOUTHS ready to TASTE, DIGEST... and TALK BACK
— Aurelio Toral (@AurelioToral) 19 de febrero de 2013

SocialMediaSucces TipOfTheDay: if a post grabs ur attention enough to consider RT, enrich/inject VALUE: add ur personal comment to the RT
— Aurelio Toral (@AurelioToral) 18 de febrero de 2013

Social Media Marketing Success Tip of the Day: Don't obsess with content generation, the Key is to ADD VALUE
.
— Aurelio Toral (@AurelioToral) 12 de febrero de 2013

An intelligent comment about somebody's content may add more value than media content of your own.
— Aurelio Toral (@AurelioToral) 12 de febrero de 2013

Social Media Mktg Success Tip of The Day: A Story aims for the heart, a List aims for the brain, great content touches both...

— Aurelio Toral (@AurelioToral) 9 de febrero de 2013

SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING: LONG OR SHORT GAME?

Which One is Social Media?   BOTH 

A recent post by @jimdougherty titled "Why Social Media Marketing Isn't a Long Game" caught my attention briefly. It discussed a FORBES piece titled “The TruthAbout Social Media”, and ended asking: “Is Social Media Marketing a “long game” or are social goals more accessible than this?” Let me share my 5 cents on the matter.

In my opinion, the real question should read: Is Marketing (stripped off additional tags) a “long game”? If your answer to this question is yes, then you should treat SMM likewise.

Marketing has always been about a search to communicate ideas, a struggle for differentiation, a contest  to influence and resonate on people’s minds. Even when you use marketing to promote a short term objective, there is always a residual message embedded.

Social Media is a different channel to spread your message, a powerful one. One that tears apart the very fabrics of old fashion marketing practices for 2 main reasons:

1.-  It levels the plainfield empowering the consumer’s influence on his or her community.  The voice of an individual is not yet balanced with that of a company, but it is now at heights that enable it to speak up louder, and ears are listening.  Push and Pull strategies are losing ground to Participate and Embrace. The long run opportunities of this situation bewilder anyone’s imagination.

2.- It goes beyond the realms of other media because it is mainly about sharing. To Share to entertain, to gain recognition, to build a reputation or just for the heck of it. While with other media users engaged to mainly receive, anyone who engages in Social Media, joined either to share, receive what someone else is sharing... or both.   The power of Social media is the power of Sharing.

In conclusion, Social Media Marketing  requires a special understanding, different than traditional Media marketing, but, if you decide to include Social media as part of your Marketing efforts, then you should visualize it the same way you feel about Marketing as a whole. Whether it is a long run or a short one would depend on your perception about marketing itself.

NEW MYSPACE, OLD DISAPPOINTMENT

NOT READY FOR BUSINESS...

Earlier today, I’ve tried to become a NewMyspace user. I wanted to join using my oldmyspace account. It was a pain in my tired behind.  I tried to join from my flaming new IpadMini…  the only thing I got was the omnipresent face of Justin TImberlake and a message mentioning an upcoming App, inviting me to use Old Myspace, until such app becomes available...

From my laptop, MSExplorer9.0 could not handle NewMyspace settings. I had to download the, trial still, version 10 of Microsoft’s browser and cope with unpleasant bugs... Not a success either... I guess I won’t write about newMyspace’s user experience as I intended to...

Explorer 10 BUGS

Instead, I’ve got a confession to make: I was one of myspace’s early adopters. Joining such an infant social experiment was an exciting and very practical idea for me back those days. Since I was living far away from my Spanish family, it introduced a clean, and surprisingly easy to use, choice for keeping in touch with my homeland relatives, to my life. Nicely managed privacy settings... ample pics and video storage… gush! it was roomy enough to keep a personal blog! 

Recipe for Successful Failure

Myspace, “A space for friends”, was set to be hugely successful. It had one year’s first movers advantage over Facebook, enthusiastic users empowered to easily customize website’s appearance, and, after only two years of life, the deep pockets of Rupert Murdoch’s NewsCorp to back all up. Ironically, those “advantages” turned to be the very causes of its colossal failure.

First Mover’s Curse

Many misinformed social media specialists, attribute Myspace’s epic fail to Facebook’s irruption into the online arena. That theory is simply not true.

Facebook’s competition was not the cause of Myspace’s failure, in fact it was the other way around. The bubbles rising up from Myspace’s dive helped Facebook gain momentum with two unexpected benefits for Zuckerberg’s site:  it allowed Facebook to reach critical mass and it scared potential competitors away from the promising, but yet not proven profitable, social media business model. Like many other virtual world’s startups (Altavista’s search engine comes to mind) being first in line was not an advantage online.

The Unexpected Damn of Users Decoration

Letting the user to utterly alter the site’s appearance seemed to be a wonderful advantage, an opportunity for self-expression that would undoubtedly turn into a magnet for creativity and users. Nothing could have been further away from reality. Without a sense-full structure, Myspace’s pages turned into baroque clusters of infinite bad taste. Some of them really hurt at sight, and the ugliness was viral…in the contagious disease meaning of the word. Backgrounds infected with tiles of graceless graphics, weird font medleys... it all resembled the purse of a messy multipolar teenager.  Without even trying, Facebook’s minimalism approach of rigid settings, turned to be a surprisingly fengshuistic advantage after the fact.

Deep Pockets... from Hell

NewsCorp buying Myspace for under $600 million seemed to be a safe bet. Surely, Murdock’s deep pockets would allow the social network to move forward at warp speed. It was so for a while… but those pockets were also a magnet for litigation. 

Content owners, specially the music and enterteniment industries, went after Myspace for their users' infringement of intellectual property rights. Murdoch pleaded to their demands and started placing filters to eliminate use of unauthorized content.

I suffered the consequences myself! 

I posted a family video on witch I used no more than 10 seconds of a song (from a CD I owned) at the end of the 2 minutes the video lasted. I used it to spice things up a little, adding a joyous touch, so my parents could see their grandson swimming on a river. I was not profiting from its use. It was a song I legally acquired and my site's privacy settings only allowed for a handful of persons to watch the video. MySpace's content police erased the video and sent me a copyright infringement warning.The magic of the website’s freedom was gone… as was about to happen with us, its users.   

The lurching evolution of the site after that until its acquisition by Justin Timberlake’s company and friends maybe the subject of a boring post that, frankly, I do not find any urge to write.

I’ve got mild expectations about NewMySpace capabilities to aggregate other social media platform’s content in a visually pleasant fashion. I am very curious to see the way it presents its search engine results, as well.  Such is my lust for learning, that I am willing to give it another try as soon as they fix the inconveniences I mentioned earlier... but my patience is running out at the same pace my disappointment is filling up.