Bryan: Befriending a Brand

ONLINE COMMUNICATIONS:

I agree with Rebecca. Facebook is ripe for public affairs. I just think many practitioners are only now beginning to understand that social networking has transformed the way people make decisions. As Andy Marken wrote for Public Relations Quarterly in 2008, studies have shown that individuals go online to research ideas and products before making up their mind.

“Conventional news media may make the consumer aware of the (issue) but people make their… decisions from peer recommendations” – not organisational websites or literature, not from the local retail outlet, not even from online expert recommendations (Marken 2008).

The problem is that modern communication/marketer professionals are still a little scared of the unknown. I agree with you, Nick. If they haven’t gleaned experience exercising these new online strategies, they’re complacently stuck in old methodology, closed to ideas that might require a new learning curve. It’s an old dog new trick sort of thing – or just plain laziness.

I remember in 1997, fighting with my employer to conduct direct mail campaigns via email. He didn’t understand it. He didn’t trust it. And, the little he’d heard about it, he didn’t like. But now everyone does online marketing and his company is right there with them. And yes, Nick, he’s doing exactly what everyone else does.

But not out of fear or brand dilution, just simply because it works. In the 10 plus years that I’ve been studying online marketing, I’ve learned that conformity is only a rule-set for a language of commerce. The most successful websites are ones where individuals know how to obtain the info they need – common placement of navigation links, contact info, ‘zine signup, product offer, and organisational profile.

Uniform simplicity is what’s most profitable online. So, again yes, creativity doesn’t mean an open pallet, it means fitting an idea into a limited framework. Highly creative concepts that break out of the box in a dramatic way, do so for a very specific demographic, namely youth, and for a limited amount of time. The key, I believe, is to brand an organisation directly to the target audience so as to stay ahead of its trends.

That’s where Facebook comes in. Jeffrey Hanckock, an associate professor of communications at Cornell University, studied the social networking phenomenon, discovering that “Cyberspace friendships form over common interests just as they do in real life” (The Futurist:World Trends and Forecast 2009). As Marken (2008) writes, “it’s a community” and the key to admission is invitation.

A study conducted in by Dr Hope Koch in 2009, revealed that individuals trust social networking on sites such as Facebook more than direct company contact. They’re like me, more likely to engage an organisation if introduced by a friend. That’s what PR professionals can capitalize on. And no Nick, I don’t think they need any other hook than that. It’s all about point of commonality.

If you know my community and or subset of that community, you’ll know what short tweet-sized message will, (at risk of showing my sales roots) push the audience’s hot buttons. The question then for marketers and PR practitioners is how to access who my peers and I are.

PRIVACY:

Conveniently for them, Facebook reversed its privacy policy last December and made almost all information, including status updates, searchable in real-time on Google and Bing if users don’t change their privacy settings.

The founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, defended this action at an awards ceremony in San Francisco this past January, “saying it was in line with the new social norms”. He argued that lots of people now share personal information online – “their activities, habits, and purchases” – and don’t care if it’s captured by businesses.

And while that may be fine for the 59 percent of Facebook users who are between 18 and 25, I’m not so sure the rest of its 350 million members Zuckerberg claims to have would agree. Like Rebecca, I have closely regulated who can see my information and what I allow posted on my Facebook page. It is after-all my personal space in my community and uninvited prying eyes are not welcome.

Users have to be really careful about their privacy online. Employers, family and just about anyone could potentially have access to personal information through a simple search engine. More and more people are losing jobs and opportunities by believing their lives online are as private as the ones at home. As Reid Goldborough writes in Teacher Librarian, “keep the private private.”

FRIENDSHIP:

So now the issue is how do Facebook users know who to share information with – who to make their ‘friend’. Nick, you raised this concern as well; are those hunting for our bits of data, truly ‘friends’. Michael Simonson writes in the journal Distance Learning, we all intrinsically know “what it means to be a friend. We learn early in life that, as Emerson said, ‘The only way to have a friend is to be one’.”

But unlike some other languages, relationship-based words are often ambiguous in English, encompassing more than one level and interaction. Take for example, the concept of ‘love’. Is the love felt for my mother, pet, girlfriend, or best friend the same, yet there is only one word. The same is true for ‘friend’. A friend could be only an acquaintance.

For instance, a number of those on my Facebook list are people I went to high school with but with whom I never really had a friendship. Yet I added them, much like past work colleagues, out of some fear of reticule within my network. As Gwyneth commented early in our postings, “how do we manage it?” How do we avoid the social pitfalls of such antisocial behaviour as not ‘friending’ someone?

Do I avoid Facebook, relegating myself exclusively to onground activities, like an adolescent too afraid to go to school and confront the social pressures of youth? No, I do as Rebecca suggested and manage my personal brand. I change my Facebook privacy settings to segment my ‘friends’ by level intimacy, and control what they can and cannot view on my page; I apologise to co-workers and offer them membership in my LinkedIn network instead.

The complex relational issues experienced on social networking sites like Facebook are the same that confront us in the real onground world. I don’t need to not participate. I just have to be picky about who enters my community, whether they’re true friends or communicators looking to gain something from me. Entry is at my permission and my permission alone.

And yes, I do on occassion become friends with companies and join their Facebook pages. James Boag is my friend and he makes me laugh all the time with is humorous video uploads. Sometimes he and my network even get together for a beer. Nothing says community like a cold one on a hot Aussie day. That guy really knows me.


References:

Anonymous. (2009). How to win at social networking. The Futurist: World Trends and Forecast, 43(4), 9.

Anonymous. (2010). Facebook founder: Online privacy not a “social norm”. Newsletter on Intellectual Freedom, 59(2), 48-49.

Elmore, B. (2009). Social networking strategies. Baylor Business Review, 28(1), 25-27.

Goldsborough, R. (2009). Looking good on social networking sites. Teacher Librarian, 36(3), 62.

Marken, 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.