I agree with Nick and don’t think Facebook is necessarily better than the marketing venues already out there. Anyone who does is probably inexperienced or desperate for a silver bullet. But Facebook is where a lot of the audience is now spending their time, making it the place to be as a public relations professional even if Facebook becomes a fad.
Ashleigh’s commented link from Marcom (2010) echoes my user habits: ‘‘Facebook is solidifying its position as not only your primary social network, it’s also emerging as a central hub for your attention, updates, news, promotions, and enlightenment.’
And, as Belle’s linked Web Strategy Matrix chart illustrates, Facebook is kicking butt at continuing to grab more and more market share with additional uses and applications. For that reason, Nick, I don’t think it is saturated. 1.5 million companies is a drop in the bucket compared to 300-400 million consistently expanding users.
The problem, Nick, is more of what you presented in the conversation earlier, how to weed out the junk ‘friends’ and find the people who really want to hear our message. Marken (2008) writes in Public Relations Quarterly that ‘everyone who wants… (our services) is important’. Yet, I’m not sure I buy that.
As our blogs and a few comments have consistently pointed out, we don’t really know who these people are. Simonson (2008, quoting Suden 2003), puts it best when he writes that they ‘type oneself into being.’ The online world is one of ideals, where its inhabitants portray themselves as they want to be seen.
In the virtual gaming sense that could mean full on avatars, but on Facebook I think it just means self editing. I for example try to avoid joining political pages unless they’re hosted by a close friend. So a potential public relations person can’t really get a true sense of my affiliations.
The key again is knowing me through my friends. Chantelle, Rebecca, and Ashleigh in her comments sighted some good suggestions for drawing people in but the statement about finding out who has the most influence in a network of friends is what I find most powerful.
I agree with Belle that WOM can’t be disruptive. Even in the onground world, if a friend suggests an affiliation that doesn’t jive with your viewset, you ignore it or get annoyed at their insistence. Facebook is, as I’ve insinuated before, simply a community in cyberspace with almost the same social rules.
Facebook takes us back to the origins of direct marketing when we had to knock on doors, shake hands, and even kiss babies. Then, the most powerful bonding agent was pier opinion. The same seems to hold true on Facebook. Yes ,Belle, we do join pages because our friends have.
Rebecca is right, like the Internet when it first went commercial, this technology is a communication tool not a new way of doing business. And if you want to swim with the fishes you got to get in the water. So what do you think, Nick, has the most powerful marketing tool of WOM from us convinced you to get involved?
References
Marken, G. A. (2008). The New Communications Tools... Listening, Helping. Public Relations Quarterly, 52(3), 21.
Simonson, M. (2008). Will you be my friend. Distance Learning, 5(2), 99-100.
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Shebley said..
ReplyDeleteBryan..with regards to your statement “Facebook takes us back to the origins of direct marketing when we had to knock on doors, shake hands, and even kiss babies” however, there are critics of the use of online marketing i.e via Facebook, as it does not involve face-to-face interaction and therefore lacks trust which occurs within face-to-face relationships. Face-to-face interaction allows marketers to sell products via the power of persuasive communication, while when this occurs indirectly, it creates mutual trust and beneficial relationships between both parties.