The majority of my job focuses on how Windows can connect and build relationships with our most passionate customers on Social Networks (SN). I run the social media team for Windows so I'm 100% focused on how I can drive my business and build brand loyalty for Windows through the social web. About 75% of that means working with SN's. The top SN's we focus on in the US are Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and MySpace. I have relationships with people at each network and appreciate the partnerships they are looking to create with brands. But my one frustration is while they continue to innovate on their product offerings for both consumers and brand marketers they do very little to reach out to me and ask me what I as a brand marketer values and would be willing to pay for. Since all of these brands are free to users it would make sense they would want to understand the value of the people that actually pay for their product, the brand marketer.
Notice I don't say advertisers. I'm not an advertiser. I don't sit on our media buying team (paid media), I work on our earned media team. I still have a budget, albeit a sliver of a media buyers budget, but nonetheless will spend money this year to promote and market my brand. So I ask myself, why aren't my partners at the SN's more interested in what is of value to me. I am happy to help them innovate and bring products to market brand marketers will pay for, but quite frankly no one has asked . So I'll do what all bloggers do, post it here for others to weight in on and maybe some of this feedback will get back to the SN's I am hoping will hear it.
10 things brand marketers want from SN's:
1. Access to people who would be interested in my product. I don't need to see everyone, just the people that have an affinity for what I am selling. (Facebook does this pretty well)
2. Ability to have a conversation where I can respond to enthusiasts and naysayers (SN's get points for this. They all offer this feature)
3. Portable content so if someone wants to share what I am talking about with their network they can easily pass-along
4. Ability to track the pass-along of that shared content
5. Cut through the clutter. A few of the SN's have gotten so riddled down with 'stuff' you can't discover anything of value. How can SN's help brand marketers cut through the clutter.
6. Featured brand pages (YouTube and MySpace do this now but it will cost you)
7. Kill the modular layouts. There is very little ability to customize brand pages on SN's due to modular restrictions.
8. Automated language 'clean up'. Delete any comments with four letter words.
9. Tagging functionality. This would make it possible for people to discover conversations across networks. (Twitter #tags are the closest thing to this right now)
10. A better partnership – innovate WITH me
I'm sure there are lots more I haven't thought of. Would love to hear what others think. Cheers!
Windows7 Social Media Case Study
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