On February 22nd a massive earthquake struck Christchurch causing massive damage and killing many people. As the international media covered the event, Google did what they do best – created an easy and effective way for people to find the information they needed. Complete with resources including emergency numbers, missing person finder, map, updated news and video, as well as real time responses from Twitter.
The beginning of this year has been all about question and answer site Quora. Having put aside some time this morning to have my first peek I have to admit that it is a fun site. A little like a cross between Yahoo! Answers and Reddit, it enables users to debate a question in an organised fashion, commenting on answers and approving or disapproving them.
Launched last May as a beta, Quora has exploded in the last week or so, but I was nervous to get involved – there is already limited time in the day to interact on the social networks I am involved in. The immediate function that struck me was how easily it integrated into my existing social networks on Facebook and Twitter. It followed all my Twitter friends who are already using it. No need to build a brand new network and already lots of things to look at. (This is a common aspect of most social networks now.)
The problem Quora will have is that it is very time consuming. The benefit of both Facebook and Twitter is that they can run in the background of your life and you can check in as and when. Quora requires indepth reading and so takes up a lot more time – half an hour flew by this morning. This is fine, but it means that many people will fade away as the novelty wears off and other distractions take it’s place.
So yes, it is just another social network. It won’t replace Twitter, since it’s not really a place to have a chat as well as share information. I suspect people will talk about it and how to share links to enhance SEO etc, but there will be limited effectiveness.
For further reading on this I strongly recommend Dave Chaffey’s article on iMedia:
http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/28289.asp
A team of scientists from Royal Holloway, University of London, the University of Southampton and the Institute of Zoology at London Zoo have been researching the social butterfly effect – studying how we change our friends throughout our lives. They are interested in the fact that, despite the fleeting nature of many of our relationships, we often form cliques – circles of friends that are often friendly with each other. This could help us to understand why our society is made up of so many groups, from political to sporting.
The Role of Social Media and How to Measure It
The key difficulty when trying to define the role of social media in your marketing is working out how to measure its success. It is relatively easy to measure some forms of marketing, such as pay per click advertising and banner advertising. Using Google analytics it is simple to see how many people who clicked on your advert bought something.
However, this is only part of the picture. You can’t measure the people who looked at your site, bookmarked it and then came back later. It is difficult to track the journey that person takes (you can of course install Spyware and scripts onto people’s computers, but that is a serious breach of their privacy).
Social media is a whole new challenge. You could measure it on how many people click through to your website or how many fans and followers you have or even interactions. In fact you’re probably measuring all three. The problem with this kind of measurement is that it doesn’t capture the entire picture of what’s going on. It also assumes that social media is like every other kind of advertising.
Social Media is About Building Lists
Social media is about building lists of loyal subscribers. This means that when you launch a new product or have a promotion you have a list of people ready to participate and help spread the word.
The downside of social media is that it takes time. It is important to never take your fans and followers for granted, to reward them regularly and, most importantly, treat them with respect. Reply to their comments, help them when they ask and don’t bombard them with information that is only about your company or product. Share fun articles, interesting information and informative videos about your industry.
The other important aspect of growing your following is to mention your social media sites on all of your other marketing materials. Don’t think that because someone clicks away from your website to your Facebook Page that you have lost a sale. You may have just gained a valuable follower who doesn’t want to buy at that exact moment, but wants to keep in touch with your company.
The Long Term Approach
Measure the success of your social media over a longer term, over a year or so. Look at how many interactions you are receiving and how many people are responding to your promotions. Also look at your overall online presence. How many links have you now got? How many people are searching for your company name on search engines? And how many times are you being talked about on blogs and in forums?
