MindComet

Facebook is dead. And so is Twitter.

An interesting argument was made by Dustin Clingman, a local game designer, at the DMAF’s “State-of-the-Digital Media-Industry” event in Orlando.

He makes the point that Twitter, unlike Facebook, has positioned itself as an extremely efficient method for spreading out information with global context. He makes his point by asking the question, “Who found out about Michael Jackson being dead on Facebook?“

In his comparison of the two platforms, from a mass-communications standpoint, I totally agree with his point that “Facebook is dead”.

However, I think his comparison is short-sighted in a couple of regards and is clearly from the stand point of a non-marketer.

For one, Twitter has lost alot of it’s trust factor. It’s becoming a very noisy platform that’s been infiltrated by unscrupulous marketers, get rich quick schemes, hackers, hoaxsters and hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of bots (no one, not even Twitter knows the extent of this problem). Following the death of Michael Jackson, who found out that Jeff Goldblum, Ellen Degeneres, and Britney Spears had died on Facebook? These claims were all over Twitter, yet were all completely false.

Secondly, Dustin has failed to factor in the huge marketing potential that Facebook provides—the potential for word of mouth marketing in groups of friends with an implicit level of trust that’s unparalleled on other social platforms. According to a recent study by eMarketer, 34% of US Internet users bought a product based on a recommendation from a friend or relative. Compare this to a mere 5% who were influenced by a blogger (or micro-blogger).

So while were doing comparisons, from a social media trust and WOM standpoint, I believe that “Twitter is dead”.

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Posted by Jeremy Hilton on Jul. 02, 2009

Market with your four walls

It’s no secret, MindComet sells social media strategy as a service. Organizations come to us, not knowing where and how to start using social marketing effectively. We educate and help them, generally in exchange for money. But today, we’re giving away a freebie. It’s a very basic, two-fold strategy that, in my opinion, is one of the most effective strategies a business can employ.

Part one: Market with your four walls.

Four-walls marketing is not a new concept, yet it is really simple. If you can consistently deliver a unique and memorable experience to your customers, they WILL market for you. Top restaurants have been doing this for years. Do you think that the Cleveland-based chef and restauranteur, Michael Symon, spends significant amounts of money advertising his flagship restaurant Lola? No, his guests do his marketing for him - By the way, if you’re ever in Cleveland you MUST dine there. It is amazing - see what I mean?

So ask yourself, is your customer experience unique? Are you delivering something, whether it be a product, experience, or customer service, that you can reliably say you’re doing better, and not just marginally better, than your competition? Work on this until you can emphatically say yes, then move on to part two.

Part two: Encourage or ask your customers to talk about you on social media channels.

If you’re doing part one right, then you’re guests will already be talking about you to their friends. However, you’re goal is to have them talking about you in a public forum, like social media. Don’t be bashful, strike up conversations with your happy customers and see if they use social media. If so, ask them to post reviews on sites like Yelp, Urbanspoon, Twitter, Facebook, and their blogs. Sometimes people just need a little nudge and I guarantee that a good number of them will be happy to do it.

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Posted by Jeremy Hilton on Jun. 26, 2009