The debate over social media’s effectiveness continues.

May 18, 2021May 18, 2021 Phillip Nones Advertising, Branding, Marketing, Marketing Communications, Social Media Advertising, Branding, Mark Ritson, Social Media

Quoting Dr. Mark Ritson, is social media “the greatest act of mis-selling in the history of marketing?”

For people who might have wondered if the coronavirus pandemic and the resulting “lockdown culture” that followed would bring more clarity to the debate about the effectiveness of social media, I think it’s safe to conclude that very little has changed in its wake. Many marketing folks continue to suspect that social media may be closer to “all hat, no cattle” than they’d like it to be.

In analyses and evaluations going as far back as a decade, most big companies’ followers on social media have never exceeded 2% to 3% of their brands’ customer base. But the true numbers are even more discouraging, because many brand followers on social media are actually “sleepers” who might have liked a brand in order to participate in a competition, receive a giveaway, or for some other “instant gratification” reason they can’t even recall now.

A more realistic metric is how many people choose to interact with a brand on social media. On that basis, the figures nosedive. Mark Ritson, a brand specialist and professor of marketing who has worked at the London Business School and the University of Minnesota, pegs true engagement at around 0.02% of the people who “like” brands.

Other research points to similarly disappointing metrics regarding social media’s impact on purchasing activities. Adobe finds that only about 1% of its social media interactions end up in a purchase, whereas search marketing, direct website traffic and referrals from other websites are the real drivers in terms of the decision to purchase.

So the dynamics haven’t really budged in recent times. At its core, social media channels enable people to communicate with one another, not with brands. For the kind of brand marketing we routinely see happening on social media, it’s little more than an advertising medium offering inventory like any other advertising business. But those aren’t the reasons why people are on social media in the first place – hence the disconnect.

Contrast those dynamics with organic search and paid search marketing, which come into play when people are searching for answers to questions – often about products and what’s available to purchase. In that regard, any investment in search marketing is money better-spent because it helps keep websites aligned with Google search bots’ way of thinking and judging what content gets shown “first and best” on search engine results pages. Marketers can see the results and judge the customer acquisition costs accordingly.

Over in the social media world, it’s true that the biggest brands can show some “success” in their audience engagement, but it’s likely because they have such a huge brand presence to begin with. That simply isn’t the case with vast majority of companies. For them, the road to commercial success likely doesn’t run through Social Mediaville.

What are your own personal experiences with marketing via social media? Has the reality lived up to the promise? Please share your thoughts and observations with other readers here.

In its legal altercation with poultry processor Wayne Farms, LinkedIn gets its wings clipped.

January 18, 2021January 19, 2021 Phillip Nones Business, Security, Social Media Business Litigation, Fraud, LinkedIn, Social Media

Ignoring complaints of a fake LinkedIn profile turned out to be a costly miscalculation.

We hear a lot about fake Facebook profiles and fake Twitter accounts. We don’t hear so much about fake LinkedIn accounts – but they can be just as problematic.

In fact, it may be that the potential financial implications of faux LinkedIn accounts are sometimes more consequential. The revelation last week that LinkedIn has settled a lawsuit brought by Wayne Farms, a multi-billion dollar poultry company with 13 U.S. processing facilities, helps paint the picture.

The facts of the case are interesting. In the summer of 2020, a sales manager for Wayne Farms noticed that someone had created a fake LinkedIn profile of him. The sales manager also determined pretty quickly that the faux persona was using the profile to reach out to customers and set up deals.

More specifically, the imposter was attempting to engage one customer in the United States and another in Italy in phony product purchase transactions.

As David Brezina, a Chicago-based attorney representing Wayne Farms, explained, “LinkedIn was used to make more credible some scams that were basically to buy a container load of product. It was a great deal – but you had to submit 20% down.”

“The fraudster was looking to collect $5,000 or $10,000 from potential customers of my client upfront,” Brezina continued. “LinkedIn was a valuable tool to make the scam more credible.”

What did LinkedIn do to address the problem? It took the correct action – at first. Contacted by the Wayne Farms sales manager about the fake profile, the social platform took down the offending account.

But barely a month later another fake profile of the same sales manager reappeared on LinkedIn. Wayne Farms promptly submitted two notifications to LinkedIn asking for the account to be removed once again.

This time around, LinkedIn’s response was … crickets.

It was only after Wayne Farms filed a federal lawsuit against LinkedIn in early December, seeking compensatory damages for trademark counterfeiting, federal trademark infringement and reputational harm, that the fake profile was removed.

Regarding LinkedIn’s failure to act in the second occurrence, Brezina pointed out, “You need to be responsible; you need to have procedures where if fraud is being committed … victims can contact you.”

In this case, LinkedIn chose to ignore such entreaties – or the request got hung up in its internal bureaucracy. Either way, it turned out to be a costly blunder for the social platform. This past week, LinkedIn settled the Wayne Farms lawsuit out of court. Financial terms of the settlement are confidential, but you can be sure that the costs involved are more than merely symbolic.

Interestingly, during the discovery phase of the lawsuit, LinkedIn let it be known that it restricted more than two million fake accounts in just a six-month period last year, so this isn’t an isolated occurrence.

But what it also means is that users of LinkedIn need to be as vigilant in policing that platform as they are with any other social media outlet. That revelation came as a bit of a surprise to me, frankly.

What about you? Have you or someone you know ever been the victim of any monkey business or questionable activity pertaining to your LinkedIn profile? If so, please share your experiences with other readers here.

A Marketer’s Resolution for the New Year

December 29, 2019 Phillip Nones Advertising, Branding, Business, Marketing, Marketing Communications, Media, Media Consumption, Social Commentary, Social Media marketing, Marketing Tactics, Social Media

Note: Those of you who are regular readers of my marketing and culture blog have noticed that it “went dark” for a period of time over the past month or so. The twin developments of health issues plus a death in the family (my mother, at the age of 96-and-a-half years), meant that I needed to be focused on recuperation and also estate matters. But I’m back … and hopefully back to my regular schedule of posting.

For my final blog post of 2019, it comes in the form of a resolution for us marketers. It’s to finally acknowledge how little “upside potential” there actually is for social media to build or maintain a brand presence … and instead to place renewed focus on tactics that’ll actually deliver a more measurable ROI.

Most of my business clients have put a degree of effort into social media over the years – some with more focus and fortitude than others. But whether the campaigns have been “full speed ahead” or only half-hearted, invariably the end-result seems to be the same: a sales needle that hardly moves, if at all.

Moreover, social media takes a deceptively significant amount of effort for that little bit of payoff. Companies that put in the effort devote human capital and in some cases substantive dollar resources to tap outside support, but frequently the results aren’t any more impactful than for our clients who merrily go on ignoring social medial platforms, year after year. At least when looking at bottom-line sales.

Plus, in our highly sensitized world, these days it seems that when social media actually has an impact, more often than not it’s a negative one. Too often it’s the sorry end-result of some sort of faux pas where even the best-laid plans for departmental or legal review aren’t carried out fully and the brand gets into trouble. (Sometimes that happens even with all of the checks and balances in place and being carried out religiously.)

So for 2020, we marketers could well be better off acknowledging how thin the promise of social media actually is. We should ignore the siren calls of “likes” and “engagement” and stop chasing the phantom pot of gold at the end of the phantom rainbow. Chances are, your company’s bottom line will look just as strong, even as you focus more of your time and budget on marketing activities that’ll actually make a positive difference.

What are your thoughts on social media for brands? Please share them with other readers here.

What’s “wrong” with the Internet and social media?

September 24, 2019September 25, 2019 Phillip Nones Content Creation and Content Management, Human Resources, Marketing Communications, Media, Media Consumption, Social Commentary, Social Media Daniel Kahneman, Gord Hotchkiss, Hobbesian State of Nature, Internet, Social Engagement, Social Media, Thinking Fast and Slow

Maybe more than you think.

Canadian interactive media and search engine specialist extraordinaire Gord Hotchkiss is one of my favorite columnists who write regularly on marketing topics. Invariably he does a fine job “connecting the dots” between seemingly disparate points — often drawing thought-provoking conclusions from them.

In short, a Hotchkiss column is one that is always worth reading. In his latest piece he starts out with a bold pronouncement:

“When the internet ushered in an explosion of information in the mid-to late-1990s there were many — I among them — who believed humans would get smarter.

What we didn’t realize then is that the opposite would eventually prove to be true.”

His point is that information technology has begun to change the time-honored ways humans are hard-wired to think, which is both fast and slow. In essence, two loops are required for mental processing: the “fast” loop pertains to our instinctive response to situations, whereas the “slow” loop is a more thoughtful processing of discerning reality.

[This line of thinking ties back to theories laid out in a book published in 2011 by psychologist and economist Daniel Kahneman titled Thinking, Fast and Slow.]

In Hotchkiss’ view, people need both loops – especially now, considering the complexity of the world.

A more complex world requires more time to absorb and come to terms with that complexity. But when the focus is only on thinking “fast,” the results aren’t pretty. As he observes:

“If we could only think fast, we’d all believe in capital punishment, extreme retribution, and eye-for-eye retaliation. We would be disgusted and pissed off almost all the time. We would live in a Hobbesian State of Nature [where] the ‘natural condition of mankind’ is what would exist if there were no government, no civilization, no laws, and no common power to restrain human nature.

The state of nature is a ‘war of all against all’ in which human beings constantly seek to destroy each other in an incessant pursuit for power. Life in the state of nature is ‘nasty, brutish and short.’”

Do any of us wish to live in a world like that? One would think not.

But here’s where Hotchkiss feels like things have gone off the rails in recent times. The Internet and social media have delivered to us the speed of connection and reaction that is faster than ever before in our lives and in our culture:

“The Internet lures us into thinking with half a brain … and the half we’re using is the least thoughtful, most savage half … We are now living in a pinball culture, where the speed of play determines that we have to react by instinct. There is no time left for thoughtfulness.”

In such an environment, can we be all that surprised at the sorry result? Hotchkiss, for one, isn’t, noting:

“With its dense interconnectedness, the Internet has created a culture of immediate reaction. We react without all the facts. We are disgusted and pissed off all the time. This is the era of ‘cancel and ‘callout’ culture. The court of public opinion is now less like an actual court and more like a school of sharks in a feeding frenzy.”

Not that every interaction is like that, of course. If you think of social media posts, there are many — perhaps more — that are wonderfully charming, even cloyingly affectionate.

Most people are quick to point out that there’s this good side to social media, too – and in that sense, social media merely reflects the best and worst of human nature.

But regardless of whether it’s negative or positive, pretty much all interactive media lives in the realm of “thinking fast.” All of it is digested too quickly. Too often it’s empty calories – the nutritional equivalent of salt-and-vinegar potato chips or cotton candy.

Hotchkiss’ point is that interactive communications and media have effectively hijacked what’s necessary for humans to properly pause and reflect in the “slow thinking” lane, and he leaves us with this warning:

“It took humans over five thousand years to become civilized. Ironically, one of our greatest achievements is dissembling that civilization faster than we think. Literally.”

Hyperbole? Perhaps not.

LinkedIn’s Weak Link

September 22, 2019September 23, 2019 Phillip Nones Business, Employment, Human Resources, Social Media Business, Corporate Yellow Book, D&B, Ed Gandia, Hoover's, LinkedIn, Sales Management, Social Media, Social Platforms, Wikipedia

On balance, most people would agree that the LinkedIn social media platform has been a positive development in the field of business. Until LinkedIn came along, often it was quite challenging to make and nurture connections with like-minded industry or professional colleagues, or to find relevant contacts deep within corporations or other organizations.

I’m old enough to remember the “bad old days” of fruitless searches through the Corporate Yellow Book, Hoover’s and Dun & Bradstreet mercantile listings to try to find good company contacts. Often the information was far too “upper-level,” out-of-date, or simply wrong. Industry, state and regional directory listings were even worse.

Invariably, any data ferreted out needed to be vetted through phone calls made to beleaguered front-office receptionists who were understandably disinclined to spend much time being helpful.

Of course, as with Wikipedia all LinkedIn “data” is submitted information, and subject to varying degrees of accuracy. As well, the data are comprehensive and accurate only to the degree that each LinkedIn member keeps his or her employment and related information current and complete.

But as a crowd-sourcing database of information – and often with “deep-dive” data on members available to view – LinkedIn is miles ahead of where we were before.

That being said, there is one negative aspect about LinkedIn that seems to have become more pronounced over time — and that’s the burgeoning volume of LinkedIn connection requests that are happening.

Speaking for myself, I’ve spent an entire career nurturing my business relationships. That this has resulted in being one of the LinkedIn members who are in the “500+ connections” club speaks to a lifetime of establishing “real” connections with “real” people – not mindlessly sending out connection solicitations to just anyone.

But that’s what’s happening with many of the incoming requests-to-connect on LinkedIn. These days, I’m receiving requests daily from people I do not know personally and have never even heard of before.

These are the folks who take advantage of LinkedIn’s higher cost”premium membership” programs to gain access to the more detailed information contained in member profiles that is normally off-limits to all except first-degree connections.

In what ways are these people actually interested in connecting with me? Are they simply sending out a rash of “spray-and-pray” requests in the hopes of getting a nibble … or perhaps making an effort to build their own network and look more like an “authority” in their line of work?

When I click through to view the profiles of those people requesting to connect, it turns out that most them are in fields that relate to my line of work, however tangentially. Likely they’ve identified my name based on shared professional organizations and vocational interests.

But their reasons for requesting to connect — if they even bother to give one — are so generic (or so lame) as to be laughable.

Early on, I did a bit of “empirical” research to see how a few of these connections might actually evolve after I accepted their request to connect. Big mistake, that was. Recently, freelance copywriter extraordinaire Ed Gandia described something very similar about his own personal LinkedIn experience, characterizing the typical follow-up communiqué from a new LinkedIn connection as “the business equivalent of a marriage proposal” – to wit:

“I’d like to get on the phone with you about [marrying me/having kids/opening a joint bank account]. Here are three times I’m available to talk. I’m so excited to hear what you can offer me as [my new husband].”

If ever we needed reminding about how not to engage in business development solicitations, these sorry LinkedIn communications are it.

The bright promise of LinkedIn is the ability to identify people with whom we can potentially work or collaborate. In that regard, the platform can be very valuable. It’s just too bad that so many people are now using it for ill-conceived (or perhaps desperate?) shotgun attempts to sell themselves, their products or their services.

It won’t work. Communications technology may have evolved but some fundamental things never change. At the top of the list: No one wants to be pestered by unsolicited pitches for products, consulting services, employment opportunities and the like. Not then, not now, not ever.

Hopefully, LinkedIn can calibrate its business practices to ensure that the benefits of interacting with the social platform always outweigh the detriments. We all recognize that this is one way LinkedIn can monetize the data that’s valuable housed on its platform. But LinkedIn needs to get this just right, lest they turn off their most consequential members – or worse, drive them away.

Facebook attempts to clean up its act.

June 19, 2019June 19, 2019 Phillip Nones Content Creation and Content Management, Media, Media Consumption, Publishing, Security, Social Commentary, Social Media Community Enforcement Report, Data Privacy, Facebook, FTC, Mark Zuckerberg, Social Media

Is it enough?

Watching Facebook these days as it pivots from diffusing one “rude development” to another seems a little like watching someone perform a combination plate-spinning and whack-a-mole act.

We’ll call it the Facebook Follies. The question is … is it working?

Last month, Facebook issued its newest Community Enforcement Report – a document that updates the world about improvements the social media giant is making to its platform to enable it to live up to its stated community standards.

Among the improvements touted by the latest report:

Facebook reports now that ~5% of monthly active accounts are fake. (Still, 5% represents nearly 120 million users.)
Facebook reports now that its ability to automatically detect “hate speech” in social posts has jumped from a ~24% incidence in 2018 to ~65% today. (But this means that one-third of hate speech posts are still going undetected.)

Moreover, Facebook now reports that for every 10,000 times Facebook content is viewed by users:

~25 views contain content that violates Facebook’s violence policy
~14 views contain content violating Facebook’s adult nudity and sexual activity policy
Fewer than 3 views contain content violating Facebook’s policies for each of these categories: global terrorism; child nudity, and sexual exploitation

The community enforcement information is being reported as “wins” for Facebook … but people can’t be faulted for thinking that Facebook could (and should) be doing much better.

On a different type of matter, this past week it was reported that Facebook has agreed to settle a class-action complaint that accused the social platform of inflating viewing metrics on Facebook videos by up to 900%.

Although details of the settlement haven’t been revealed, this development appears to close the book on criticisms that were lodged as far back as 2016, in which advertisers charged that Facebook hadn’t investigated and corrected errors in its metrics — nor allowed for third-party verification of the metrics.

It’s yet another agenda item that’s now been ticked off the list – at least in Facebook’s eyes. But now another controversy has now erupted as reported over the past few days in The Wall Street Journal.

Described in a front-page article bylined by veteran WSJ reporters John McKinnon, Emily Glazer, Deepa Seetharaman and Jeff Horwitz, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg appears linked to “potentially problematic privacy practices” that date all the way back to 2012, when Facebook signed a consent decree with the Federal Trade Commission but that it may have violated subsequently.

Contemporaneous e-mail communications retrieved from the time period suggest that Zuckerberg was more than merely passively involved in deliberations about a particular app that claimed to have built a database stocked with information about millions of Facebook users. Purportedly, the app developer had the ability to display the Facebook user information to others — regardless of those users’ privacy settings on Facebook. The e-mails in question detail speculation about how many other apps were stockpiling such kinds of user data, but the evidence shows little or no subsequent action being taken to shut down the data mining activities.

These latest developments raise questions about the veracity of Facebook’s stated intentions to redouble its efforts to uphold community standards and focus more on user privacy, including moving toward encrypted and “ephemeral” messaging products that are better aligned with the European Union’s existing privacy laws that the United States may also be poised to adopt in the future.

Apparently Facebook recognizes the problem: It’s ramping up its global advertising spending to “rebuild trust” — to the tune of doubling its previous ad expenditures. Here’s what Facebook’s marketing head Antonio Lucio is saying:

“There’s no question we made mistakes, and we’re in the process of addressing them one after the other. But we have to tell that story to the world on the trust side as well as the value site.”

Ad-tracking company Kantar notes a big increase already in Facebook’s U.S. ad spending — up to nearly $385 million in 2018 compared to only around $50 million the year before. As for the campaigns themselves, Facebook is relying on a number of big-name ad agencies like Wieden+Kennedy, Leo Burnett and Ogilvy for developing its various campaigns.

There’s more than a little irony in that.

Considering the latest news items, what are your thoughts about Facebook? Are they on the right track … or is it “too little, too late”? Are their intentions honorable … or are they simply engaged in “window dressing” to get people off their case? Let us know your thoughts.

Despite privacy issues, social media adoption remains as high as ever.

February 3, 2019February 4, 2019 Phillip Nones Social Commentary, Social Media Digital Privacy, FOMO, Privacy, Regina Corso Consulting, Social Media

The question is, why?

It seems as though privacy issues in social media have been in the news nearly steadily over the past several years. Considering that, it might come as a surprise that social media adoption remains as high as it’s ever been.

Today, nearly 9 in 10 Americans age 18 or older are regular users of one or more social media sites (interacting at least one or two times per week).

If anything, that’s a higher percentage than before. So what gives?

Here’s the answer: According to data from a recent survey of nearly 2,200 Americans age 18 or older conducted by Regina Corso Consulting, two-thirds of respondents believe that people on social media should not have any expectations of privacy. None.

Thus, it seems pretty clear that social media users have factored in privacy concerns and decided that, on balance, the “price of admission” when using social media sites is to leave their privacy at the door. It’s a tradeoff most users recognize, understand and accept.

This isn’t to contend that all users are deliriously happy with their current social media practices. In fact, nearly 40% of the respondents in the Regina Corso survey would like to reduce or stop their usage — but are afraid of what they might miss in the way of news and updates. The “FOMO factor” is real.

In the end, that’s what Facebook and several other social media giants have long understood: Once a certain critical mass is achieved, any concerns about social platforms are negated by the sheet universal nature of them.

Just as millions of American choose to reside in places prone to hurricane storm and flooding damage while fully recognizing the potential danger, millions more choose to be on social media despite the privacy risks that everyone has heard about them.

What about you — have you changed your social media behaviors in the wake of news developments over the past several years?

The ignominious end of Google+.

December 16, 2018December 17, 2018 Phillip Nones Media, Media Consumption, Social Commentary, Social Media Ben Smith, Google, Social Media, Social Networks

… And who cares?

How many of us have predicted the demise of Google+? Over the years, the ill-fated social network wasn’t ever able to gain much traction.

Its “hangouts” and “rooms” functionality, trumpeted with great fanfare when launched, never really amounted to much. The few times I attempted to engage with people in any of those spaces, it was akin to being the only person in a restaurant at 3:00 in the afternoon.

Several months ago, Google finally bowed to the inevitable and announced that it would be shuttering Google+, effective in August 2019.

But even this end-date has turned out to be star-crossed. In one final ignominy, Google discovered a bug in a Google+ API which appears to have affected potentially more than 52 million users.

Specifically, apps that have requested permission to view the profile information that users had added to their Google+ profiles – basic things like name, age, occupation and e-mail address – were granted permission to do so even when the users’ profiles weren’t set to “public.”

On a brighter note, the bug didn’t allow access to more sensitive information such as financial figures, passwords, or similar data typically used for identity theft, nor does it appear that any of the personal information has been misused – at least not yet.

But as a result of discovering this bug, Google has now decided to shut down the Google+ social platform this coming April – four months earlier than planned.

So, what we have is that the final exit of Google+ from the scene further underscores its underwhelming existence. As Ben Smith, a Google vice president of engineering, stated candidly, the social platform “has not achieved broad consumer or developer adoption and has seen limited user interaction with apps.”

Which is another way of saying, “It’s been a failure.”

And while a few souls may be lamenting its demise, for the vast majority of people, the platform expired years ago.

What about you? Did you ever engage with this social media network? And if you did, what was your experience. Most tellingly, when did you cease you interaction?

Social Media Mashup — 2018 Edition

August 1, 2018August 1, 2018 Phillip Nones Demographics, Marketing Research, Social Commentary, Social Media Pew Research, Social Media, Social Media Behaviors, Social Media Trends

One thing you can say about social media platforms – their world is invariably interesting. Or as a colleague of mine likes to say, “With social media, you drop your pencil, you miss a week.”

The Pew Research Center makes it a point to study the topic twice each year in order to stay on top of the latest shifts in social media usage trends. Pew has just completed its latest report, and what it shows are some findings that confirm longer-term trends along with several evolving new narratives.

One thing hasn’t changed much: Facebook and YouTube continue to dominate the social landscape in the United States. Facebook remains the primary social media platform for most Americans – with two-thirds of U.S. adults reporting that they use Facebook, and three-fourths of those saying that they access the platform on a daily basis.

What this means is that half of all U.S. adults are going on the Facebook platform every day.

If anything, YouTube is even more ubiquitous – at least in terms of the percentage of people who access the platform (nearly 75% of the respondents in the Pew survey). But the frequency of visits is lower, so one could say that the platform isn’t as “sticky” as Facebook.

No other social media platform is used by more than 35% of American adults, according to the Pew survey:

YouTube: ~73% of U.S. adults report that they use this platform
Facebook: ~68%
Instagram: ~35%
Pinterest: ~29%
SnapChat: ~27%
LinkedIn: ~25%
Twitter: ~24%
WhatsApp: ~22%

The chart below shows social media usage trends based on Pew Research studies going back to 2012:

Taking a closer look at social media behaviors reveals some stark differences by age group, and they portend even greater changes in the social media landscape as time goes on. In terms of being involved in “any” social media usage, Pew finds significant differences by age cohort:

Age 18-29: ~88% use at least one form of social media
Age 30-49: ~78%
Age 50-64: ~64%
Age 65+: ~37%

So, as the current population ages out, social media participation should go even higher.

But what about the composition of platform usage? Within the 18-24 age group, Snapchat, Instagram and Twitter are used significantly more when compared to even the next oldest age group. Most dramatically, for Snapchat the participation level is ~78% for the youngest group compared to just ~54% for those age 30-49.

Other notable differences among groups include:

Pinterest is much more popular among women (~41% use the platform) than with men (just ~16%).
WhatsApp is particularly popular among American Hispanics (~41%) compared to blacks (~21%) and whites (~14%).
LinkedIn’s niche is upper-income households ($75,000+ annual income), which correlates to higher education levels. Half of American adults with college degrees use LinkedIn, compared to fewer than 10% of those with a high school degree or less.

More detailed results from the Pew Research study can be found here.