Digital Marketing and Social Networking

Social Networking, is it taking over marketing ? 

In my line of work I happen to work a lot with a prestigious advertising agency. The agency is led by people who have vast experience as marketeers and have seen numerous successes in their careers. During the last two years advertising has started to change drastically. Especially in 2011, advertisers are beginning to realize the power of the social web, which mainly consists of Facebook, here in Malta. Many advertising companies, not least this particular one, are starting to invest in digital marketing, particularly social networking. It is not an easy management task to change your existing workforce of highly trained marketeers into digital marketeers. The steep evolution curve is not due to the lack of technological expertise but rather due to the lack of fresh ideas. The usual brainstorming sessions that are carried out as the initial step in a re branding exercise, for example, must now include brainstorming for fresh digital marketing ideas. Needless to say, the company must also have a well managed team of developers with the aim of turning the dreams of the brainstorming team to working solutions but this is by no means an insurmountable hurdle. Furthermore, the company has to devise means to generate revenue from providing these new services to its clients. When you consider that Facebook, the biggest social network is free, this could turn out to be quite a challenge.

Social Networking in Malta

The Maltese are becoming well known as a nation of ICT capable people and the government has continuously invested in the training and re-training of IT people. The proliferation of the Internet across all areas of the islands and at cheap rates with fast speed has also had a very noticeable effect on the widespread use of social networks. The availability of smart phones with inexpensive "Data Plans" have also had a marked effect.

We have also seen the power of the social network as a news medium in the African uprisings were various effected regimes have recognized the effect that Facebook has had on their demise. Here in Malta, Twitter is not very popular and Facebook dominates the social networking sphere more or less.  There are still privacy fears among many Maltese. The older generation have only started to pick up the habit of checking their accounts daily but the younger generation has been using Facebook much more for a number of years.

Facebook at the workplace

As part of my IT support jobs I often get called to remove Facebook access in workplaces. This would involve setting up a content filter that typically checks content for specified keywords. Needless to say, my popularity as the IT support person for the company quickly dwindles when I complete the job. The question is, is the management right in not allowing employees access to Facebook ? First of all, many employees nowadays have smart phones which include internet access and special applications to run Facebook without consuming huge amounts of bandwidth. This means that in spite of our best efforts, it can be very difficult if not outright impossible to block access. One might argue that employees should not be allowed to use their personal mobile phones at work but most would consider that way over the top. Furthermore, it is increasingly becoming obvious that many companies who are using Facebook as their marketing platform would actually benefit by allowing their employees access to Facebook. Admittedly, company time can be wasted on personal Facebook use and it is impossible to stop only personal Facebook use. Where do you draw the line ?
Personally, I think that especially in SMEs with twenty employees or less would do better if they train and monitor their workforce rather than impose a total ban on Facebook use. This effectiveness of the line of action would obviously depend on the nature of the business but for example, if you consider a sales team that spends 50% of working ours waiting for clients, would prohibiting them from using Facebook do any good to the company added value. When Facebook did not exist, these people would invariably have read a book instead and how different is that in terms of distraction from work ?

Has Facebook changed us ?

I believe that indeed it has. In real life we would never go around telling friends we haven't seen in years that we "like" something or other that they own or do for example! We would also not show our family photographs unless we were particularly close to the person. In these respects Facebook has certainly changed us but perhaps it is for the better after all. I personally use Facebook more than the average over forty male but probably this is because I am into IT.

There are of course exaggerated cases of Facebook use even here in Malta. I have personally seen  employees loosing their job over the time they waste at work on it but like in anything else, any medium can be abused to the detriment of all involved.

In event organization, Facebook has certainly made the biggest impact in my opinion. It has never been easier to get people together whether it is a small gathering or a full blown public event. Facebook advertising itself, is also excellent for event organization although it obviously comes at a cost, albeit not a high one. This is were Facebook "pay per click" programs work much better than similar Google Adwords solutions. In Google, users have to be searching for an event whereas in Facebook the event is posted on their wall regardless if they are searching or not. Admittedly, the "click-through" ratio is much smaller on Facebook when compared to Google but just as effective. Facebook also offers a selection of demographics when selecting the target group of your advert which makes your investment more effective. Advertisers can select country, age group, sex and any of the other attributes that a person fills in when they create their account. This is of course absent in Google Adwords advertising.

Google+ and more ?

During the last weeks of our course, Google+ was launched as a Beta program and of course we were intrigued and decided to test it out. I must say that at first it looked to me that it is a Facebook clone as the screen layout is sufficiently similar. On closer inspection, the differences started emerging and there are quite a few. I love the idea of the "circles" that are designed to replace Facebook friends. The paradigm in Google+ is different because if the owner of the circle of friends includes you, then you can see his posts, but at the same time, to see his posts, he has to include you in his "circles". This is a novel idea and has advantages over the Facebook system. The "Hangout" feature is also interesting where users can chat in a "hangout" room that the user create and they can use voice and webcams. We did some tests and the system fared quite well and delay was minimal. I doubt how popular this system will becomes however. I think that using a webcam takes social networking to a completely new level and adults especially will not welcome this feature so much. Not many people want their friends to see them in their "home" attire !

Will Google+ take over Facebook ? Google seem to be getting their strategy right in my opinion. They have a full arsenal of on-line applications such as GMail, Google Docs, Picassa, Scholar, Translate and their popular Android operating system which will eventually all be integrated to Google+. I was quite surprised to see that Google+ took my email contact from my Gmail account and suggested that I invite them to Google+. Facebook does not have the benefit of this "offer all and integrate all" strategy and it will take a lot of effort to create it just to compete with Google.

Lastly, I think that for immediate future, a lot of people will have both Google+ and Facebook, but in time I see one winner emerging and I think that the scales tip on Google side.