I’ve gotten very familiar with 3 of the 4 biggest social networks. I thought I would share how I think about each of them differently and the role I see them playing in the Windows Social Media strategy.
They are the biggest. I think of YouTube as my breadth play. It’s not so much about engaging my advocate or fan base as it is playing to the masses. It’s comparable to TV as a channel for awareness. It can also deliver engagement with customers. In our Playlist Section we showcase customers on our channel that are doing cool things with Windows and creating demos. YouTube requires some investment in media to get your channel exposure AND since it’s primarily a search engine it requires SEO. You can either pay to get your videos to show up in the Sponsored Videos section on the right, or work the SEO angle and get them to show up naturally on the left (just like Search). YouTube reaches millions with quick, multiple touches. It’s about volume.
Facebook is about connections. It works for brands who build a healthy fan base. You can’t browse Facebook the way you can YouTube or MySpace so a brand needs to invest in building a fan base they can then message and activate. It’s not a breadth play the way YouTube is, it’s a targeted outreach to a set of fans that are interested in your message. Investment is required to build the fan base. Once you have an established fan base the value of messaging to them is the multiple effect it has on their network. You know them, they know 5 people who read their Facebook page so by knowing 1 person you reached 6. To optimize Facebook for your brand (more tips here) you need to understand the relationship between what you do on your fan page and how that action permeates through the larger network. Facebook just added a new metric on their reporting called “Total Interactions”. It counts all the shares, comments, likes, etc. Facebook is about the viral network effect.
Twitter is the fastest growing Social Network. 50% of users have joined in the last two months and the number of unique users increased by 1000% year over year from February, 2008. Twitter is the current ‘darling.’ But it’s quite different from YouTube or Facebook. It’s not about breadth or building a BIG network like the size of Facebook (000’s). It’s about building a following of people (in the thousands) and relying on those followers to amplify your message. Twitter is full of super engaged influencers who have very large networks of their own that you want your message to pass through. Twitter is also about how well you participate. What builds followers is action, posts. And interesting posts.Twitter doesn’t work if you have nothing to say. Twitter is also the quickest response mechanism for customer feedback and crisis management. Twitter is about real time response and amplifying your message through the larger echo chamber.
Admittedly I am not a MySpace expert. I’m quite frankly a novice. But in the next few months I intend to become one because Windows is jumping into MySpace in a big way (more to come on this at a later date). Surprisingly I’ve had several people ask me “Why? Isn’t MySpace dead?” Yes, it’s true that the other Social Networks have passed MySpace in growth, however 76M UU in the US is nothing to sneeze at. It’s still larger than Facebook in the US. It’s quite likely that MySpace’s days are number, but not anytime soon. The challenge for MySpace is they haven’t evolved their advertising offer as social media has rewritten the book on digital outreach. They have very little to offer me as a brand marketer besides the traditional media buy, and I’m not so interested in that. MySpace revolutionized the music business and I think that remains their biggest asset.
The conclusion is that Social Networks do different things. A complete social media engagement would include them all for different reasons. Be clear about what you want to accomplish in each and how they compliment each other.
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Great post, Marty! It’s very easy to read, especially for people and businesses who aren’t familiar with how they can use social networks to expand their brand. I’ll definitely refer people who need more insight and want to learn more about social media to your blog.