Buzzword 2012: Likeonomics – The Social Currency Brands Require
Let’s start with a famous marketing saying: “The more people trust you, the more they buy from you”. This principle has been proven to work throughout the commercial age, but in the social media world it’s proving that many marketers aren’t backing this up with substance. The idea is that people want to buy and do business with brands they ‘like’, or likeonomics – the theory that Rohit Bhargava discusses in his new book.
Marketers around the world have obsessed over Facebook’s ‘like’ button and are trying numerous approaches to convince consumers to hit that button. Why – because their preferences are seen by their friends as a trusted recommendation. Actual trust is a key factor when consumers look to make a purchase. Take John Lewis for example, high on the trust scale with the way it does business and its ‘Never Knowingly Undersold’ promise. Consumers know they’ll be paid the difference in price if they find the same products cheaper elsewhere.
While this is a strategy brands like John Lewis and other live and succeed by, some marketers are so caught up by Facebook’s ‘like’ button that they forget to embed a likeonomics strategy throughout the business. Getting as many people to add your brand on Facebook is not going to boost profits without Bhargava’s theory instilled throughout the business.
So 2012 might be the year when the penny drops for marketers as they realise that a likeonomics campaigns needs to be instilled throughout the brand – perhaps focusing on customer service, product knowledge, or a better consumer buying experience will add to the likeonomics factor for brands. Likeonomics as a theory does have its justification. At the very least, it’s likely to be one of those buzzwords you hear more frequently throughout the year.
Linkbait, Samantha Brick and the Canny Mail Online Team
The recent news of Samantha Brick and her tale of beauty as a burden caught the imaginations and reactions of the nation through the power of social media. In less than a few hours Samantha’s story about the pain of being beautiful had been discussed, ridiculed, condemned but most crucially distributed and read by millions. ‘Samantha Brick’ trended on Twitter for two days in a row (to date) with further spin off stories designed to capture even further readers. So big was her news that it even eclipsed the story of James Murdock resigning from BSkyB.
As the dust settles and her story becomes tomorrow’s fish and chip paper, the question can be asked that maybe the Daily Mail and Mail Online team are a rather canny bunch. Already at the helm of the UK’s biggest newspaper website (91 million unique users per month), the Samantha Brick story is likely to see a sharp spike in that figure – as readers from other sites and papers all converged to the Mail Online site to read the story and vent their opinions.
However the technique used, Linkbait, is not a new one – but the Mail Online may have hit a sweet spot with this particular story. Link bait is any content or feature, within a website, designed specifically to gain attention or encourage others to link to the website. With this story the viral aspect was huge – circulating through Facebook, Twitter et al like digital wildfire. As the story snowballed, those in charge of the advertising revenue for the Mail Online site must have been smiling like Cheshire cats. Whether the story itself was a hoax or genuine isn’t the point – it’s a canny tactic to drive traffic, using provoking content to a news site that’s already huge. If there is a Press Award for ‘Best Use of Linkbait…’ the Mail Online has it in the bag.
Are You Pinning?
News of the next big thing on social networks is almost a weekly occurrence, but sometimes one comes along that genuinely grabs your attention. The one in question this time is photo-sharing site Pinterest – you may have already heard your friends, colleagues or family talking about ‘pinning this’ and ‘re-pining that’. So what’s all the fuss about?
To break it down to its simplest form, Pinterest.com is an online and social pinboard that allows users to grab their favourite photos from across the internet and share them with followers. Users simply ‘pin’ a picture they like to their own page, and now there is even a ‘pin it’ button you can add to your browser’s favourites bar to make pinning even more easier.
The social network is currently taking the internet by storm, amassing approx. 12million users in under a year. The site is also invite only at the moment – adding a certain level of exclusivity that naturally panders to consumers’ curiosity, heightening the ‘want-factor’ to be part of it. The highly visual pin boards and simplicity of pinning something ensures its user-friendliness across all levels.
The website, high on visuals, is something brands can benefit from too. With the virtual pinboard proving an easy way to share, discover and comment on interesting content from around the web – providing a viable traffic stream to your website. Each ‘pin’ is essentially a link to an external website, therefore allowing you can drive traffic to your site by pinning eye-catching content that your audience is interested in. Users who are looking for your type of content will click through to your site. Interestingly, Pinterest is generating more referral traffic to websites and blogs than Youtube, Google + and Linkedin combined.
It’s still too early to tell if this will be a lasting thing or not, but for the time being Pinterest is definitely causing a stir. Getting involved could mean having a head start against competitors, and if it all falls by the wayside the very least you can expect is adding awareness of your brand to an interested audience. It’s a win-win scenario.
2012 Digital PR Trends: Generation Overshare
2011 saw mass sharing in the social media age bringing new meaning to the term ‘information overload’. As Mark Zuckerberg, Chief Executive of Facebook, said at the f8 developers conference last year “Our development is guided by the principle that every year the amount people want to add, share and express is increasing”.
What Facebook, and brands too, are witnessing is the trend for digitally savvy consumers disassociating themselves from the enjoyment of the moment to record it. You could see this at any live event or concert last year – the masses of people with their phones/cameras held in the air, lighting up the crowds like a sea of stars as they record away for posting on Facebook or YouTube. The trend now and more so in the future, isn’t about going to an event and having an experience but defining yourself by telling and showing others you were there.
2012 will see this trend grow and develop, and experts at Trend Watching.com predict the growing manifestation of Frictionless Sharing this year. Brands like Spotify and The Guardian already benefit from its success, allowing consumers to passively share what they are listening to and reading (via automatically sharing on your Facebook profile). This is said to be taking over from the influence and power of the ‘Like’ button, giving consumers the developing concept of an automatically curated social web.
The prediction for 2012 is for brands to embrace social sharing – pandering to the consumer desire to use content and experience as their wallpaper of daily life and broadcasting it to their network of contacts. Brands know that leveraging this power will be increasing important as the year goes on. We’ll have to stayed tuned to find out if it does.
The Importance of Evolution in Social Media
Last week the news agenda was dominated by the announcements from Facebook’s F8 conference – changes for the social network were coming. True to the rumours, Facebook played along with the script and showcased a number of big changes to the site (here), all designed to give more functionality to the user.
These changes are aesthetic – more options with pictures and video, or functional like the integration of Spotify – the background to these changes is a little more crucial to the longevity of Facebook. The tech world doesn’t stand still and if you’re a brand or service that rests on your laurels then you’ll be left on the tech scrapheap a la MySpace (remember that?).
These changes are much more important to Facebook than just making it look pretty. It needed to deliver additional functionality in a space where content and engagement is critical. The launch of Google+ earlier this year shows that users are willing to try something different. While Google+ is an unknown quantity for the moment, as consumers and brands try to work out how to use its tools for the best benefit, the huge numbers of users flocking to the site (over 43 million users at the last count) must have been a worry to Facebook. Now that it’s a free to join, rather than invite-only, must concern Mr Zuckerberg furthermore.
Facebook’s answer is to evolve. It needs to provide users with what they currently want right now – a highly usable and function social media platform, but also deliver the features they will utilise and use increasing more in the future (integration of music, new apps etc). Twitter is also set to play a big part in the way the social media landscape will settle, but for the moment is watching on as the other two big guns slog it out. It’s going to be an interesting battle, where the ultimate winner is going to be the consumer as the platforms fight it out for their digital loyalty.
