As 2011 comes to an end, let’s reflect on some of the most important lessons we’ve learned through social media—keep in mind, these are in no particular order.
- There has been a pretty significant amount of social network fatigue. Sure, there’s a new, hot social network every month. Typically, people wanted the shiny, new product, but not this year! New social media tools and platforms didn’t do too hot in 2011, mainly because it’s a pain for people to maintain a presence on yet ANOTHER social platform. However, new social platforms can thrive if they have something to offer that is unique to other platforms. Still though, with only so many hours in a day, and an abundance of places for people to incorporate themselves into online, social media networks really need to step up their game if they want to hang with the big boys.
- Google+ isn’t quite there yet, but it could be. Threatening Facebook and becoming the new “next big thing” seemed promising, but to our disappointment, Google+ fell short of expectations and growth slowed significantly. Some even described it as an outright failure. It seems that users feel Google+ just hasn’t offered anything unique enough to cut through social network fatigue and give users enough reasons to join yet another network. Google does, though, have a not-so-secret weapon that triumphs over Facebook: search. Mixing Google+ with its search engine, allowing posts to permeate query results, gives both individuals and brands incentive to put more content on Google+ rather than on Facebook’s wall. When fully executed, this will be Google+’s silver bullet—either forcing people to switch over from Facebook, or pushing Facebook to step up and adjust to the changes. Point is, once Google+ gets search integration down pat, you’re going to want to be there.
- Facebook, for all its challenges, continues to be impressively nimble in the face of challenges to its power. Many people have a love/hate relationship with Facebook—privacy violations, terms of service changes while you sleep, endless seemingly unnecessary layout and UI changes…you love to hate Facebook. Nobody can say that Facebook hasn’t responded to market challenges to its position as the predominant social network. They introduced News Feed partially in response to the emergence of Twitter a couple of years ago, and then, in 2011, they rolled out inline profile controls, introduced subscriptions, and some other changes that eliminated any uniqueness of Google+. This gives users less reason to leave them for a newer platform. Facebook is smart enough to realize what complaints are merely annoyances and which are legitimate threats, so they aren’t likely to sit on the sidelines as competitors continue to come about.
- There’s a broad overemphasis on numbers. On the surface, your number of fans or followers appears to show success and reach in social media, and many marketers seem to equate the size of one’s following with the reach of one’s influence. But it’s really not that simple. Reach is important. Obviously you have a better chance of getting your message out there if you have 1000 fans rather than 100; in fact, according to surveys, 81% of consumers have either “unliked” a page or hidden a brand’s content from their news feed. With numbers like that, it’s hard to associate the number of followers or fans with true influence. If looking solely at numbers of people who’ve “liked” a page, how can a brand know how many people are truly seeing and engaging with its content? Remember, numbers are important when determining success of your social media campaign, but knowing which numbers to pay attention to is essential.
- Privacy doesn’t really factor into social media— unless kids are involved. Yes, privacy is important to us, and people may not be comfortable with how the major social networks protect their privacy, but apparently those concerns don’t keep us from actively using those networks. Until children become involved—this is where Klout comes in. Klout was accused of automatically creating profiles for users whether or not they’d signed up for the service, including minor children who were only exposed to the tool by having commented on their parents’ pages. Suddenly, the privacy violations were New York Times material, and Klout’s momentum has stalled. The lesson here: keep away from people’s kids on social networks! There will be plenty of time to market to them after they’ve turned 18.
