Social Mediarology

Two more parts in ExactTarget’s Subscribers, Fans and Followers research series have been released since I wrote my last post on the first four parts of the series. The two most recent parts focus on Facebook X-Factors and the Collaborative Future. ExactTarget has done a fantastic job of putting these research reports together and they’ve really dug into consumers motivations when it comes to how and why they interact with technology. If you haven’t ready my summary of the first four reports, click here to read about them. If you’re interested in downloading the reports for yourself, check out ET’s Subscribers, Fans and Followers page for the full reports.

Also, if you’re attending ExactTarget’s Connections 2010 Conference on September 14-16, drop by the Lead Nurturing and Lead Scoring session on Wedensday (9/15) at 9:45am – I’ll be speaking about how we’ve worked with Right On Interactive to nurture and score leads through the Visit Indiana Foursquare/Leaf Cam promotion.

Report No. 5: Facebook X-Factors

The fifth report in the Subscribers, Fans and Followers series focuses on Facebook. After detailed reports of Email and Twitter users, how do Facebook users stack up? Do they want to interact with companies or do they want to keep Facebook purely personal and clear of marketing speak? Here are some of the highlights:

• The top four things that motivate users to follow a business are:
  • To receive discounts or promotions
  • To show my support of the company to others
  • To get a freebie (free samples, coupon) – very similar to #1
  • To stay informed about the company’s activities
• 70% of consumers who ‘liked’ a brand or company on Facebook didn’t feel they’d given the company permission to market to them (maybe Troy Thompson is on to something with his thoughts about comparing Facebook Likes to bumper stickers).
• Far and away, consumers use Facebook to reconnect with friends and maintain current friendships as opposed to maintaining and cultivating professional relationships.

So Facebook is used primarily for connecting with friends and less so for connecting with businesses. And consumers that do connect with businesses are really looking for a good deal. How can you leverage those opportunities to bring success to your company’s Facebook page?

Report No. 6: The Collaborative Future

The sixth report in the Subscribers, Fans and Followers series really focuses on ingetrating email, Facebook and Twitter – keeping in mind the strengths and weaknesses of each medium. Here are a few insights gleaned from the sixth report:

• Email is more likely to drive increased purchase intent among the largest group of consumers.
• Facebook is the least effective channel to drive increased purchase behavior.
• Twitter is actually the channel that is most likely to drive increased purchases and recommendations after a consumer follows a brand.

The rest of the report gives recommendations of ways you can integrate your marketing efforts across all three communications channels and is definitely worth a read.

Have you looked through ExactTarget’s Subscribers, Fans and Followers series? What do you think about their findings?

HootSuite just announced new Freemium pricing yesterday and here are the options. If you create a new HootSuite account today, you’ll have to choose between the different free or paid options and if you already have a HootSuite account, you’ll have to make your decision next week.

Interestingly enough, $99/month is not the top price point – the highest price plan is actually $1,999/month with Ow.ly Vanity URL service (see this page for more information). Beyond the fact that only the largest of organizations can afford nearly $50,000 a year for an SaaS social media management solution, I’m feeling a bit betrayed by HootSuite by their new pricing structure.

I’ve long been a supporter of HootSuite and have recommended it to anyone who manages their organization’s social media initiatives. I’ve even written about them several times on this blog. I don’t even mind that ads are included in the free plan. Most web users are used to seeing ads when they get something for free. And while I completely understand that HootSuite can’t continue to offer their product for free forever – no company can survive on unlimited VC funding without a solid revenue model – but I think they went about creating their paid accounts the wrong way.

Where Did HootSuite Go Wrong?

• First of all, only giving current users about a week to decide which plan to sign up for seems really quick. I’ve known that some kind of paid options was on its way for some time now, but the number and cost of options makes this a difficult decision to make in a week’s time.
• HootSuite has completely eliminated Team Members from the Free and $5/month options and even with the $20 option, you only get to add 1 team member. You have to move up to the $50/month plan in order to delegate your social media duties to more than one other team member.
• This feels like a bit of a bait & switch to me. Typically, when a service introduces paid options, they’ll include extra features and more in-depth analytics with their paid packages, but the free option usually stays the same. HootSuite is now crippling their free (and, in my opinion even their $5/month) option by limiting the number of social networks and RSS feeds.

What Could HootSuite Have Done Differently?

• Give current HootSuite users more of a heads-up and the ability to switch between the different account options for a month or so to better determine which package they would need to continue using HootSuite for their organization’s social media management.
• Create fewer, more simplified options. Rather than 4 paid options (not including the Enterprise option) HootSuite could have offered $10, $25 or $50 per month options in addition to their free plan. These options could contain escalating features, but this could offer users a more simplified way to choose their plans. They could have also offered a one-time fee to  “purchase” any of the plans, rather than paying by the month.
• HootSuite also should have either left the free option as it was (with the ability to add Team Members and manage more than 5 accounts and more than 1 RSS feed) and added more advanced features for paid users, or they should have implemented their paid structure before introducing all of their advanced features. By implementing so many great features, then putting many of them behind the pay wall, I wouldn’t be surprised if HootSuite sees a significant amount of users defect to other platforms.

Is HootSuite Still Worth Using?

In a word…Absolutely. I still think HootSuite is the best and most complete social media management tool out there and even though most of its best features are only available to paid members now, it’s still worth looking into for your organization. While you’ll have to decide for yourself whether it’s worth $20 or $50 per month for the more in-depth features, I still think HootSuite offers more than its competitors.

If you’re interested in checking out an alternative to HootSuite, you should look into Seesmic (both web- and desktop-based versions), CoTweet (web-based) and TweetDeck (desktop-based). Seesmic and TweetDeck also have iPhone and Android versions available. In fact, Seesmic, TweetDeck, CoTweet and others would do themselves a big favor if they started courting frustrated HootSuite users like Posterous’ campaign to woo users from Blogger and from Wordress.

Have you used HootSuite before? If so, does their new pricing structure make you rethink using them to manage your social media initiatives?

I’m as big a Google advocate as anyone. I’ll swear by Gmail,and Google Voice has revolutionized my voicemail and the way I leave myself notes. I use Google Contacts as a central repository for all of my professional and personal contacts. I’m always finding some new way to parse web data in Google Analytics. While I only use Blogger now for my personal family blog, it was where I got my start in blogging. I keep up with dozens of blogs through Google Reader. Even though YouTube‘s new auto-caption feature still has some bugs to be worked out, it has tremendous potential for, among other things, disablity compliance. At home, all of my photos are stored in and organized by Picasa, and every time I need directions, I pull up Google Maps.

Even though that’s all true, I can’t help but feel that Google has lost it’s edge lately. Last September, they launched Google Wave, which was touted as the future of email. Google Wave incorporated Gmail-like email functionality, collaborative capabilities like Google Docs and the ability to see responses in real time. First revealed in the summer of 2009, Google Wave was rolled out to a handful of early adopters in September. Almost as soon as it was released the blogosphere was buzzing with disappointment. Part of that was due to the fact that, with the rolling release of Wave, some of the earliest users didn’t have any one to interact with. In addition, Wave was confusing for even the most savvy web users. Though Google has made some small tweaks to Wave since its release, the general consensus is that Wave has been a let-down.

In February, Google released Google Buzz to all Gmail users. Buzz was to be Google’s answer to Facebook and Twitter. With a built-in user-base of more than 150 million, Google wanted to create their own proprietary social network to let users interact with one another through their email client. In addition to some big privacy concerns, Google only let you pull in updates from Twitter, Flickr, Friendfeed and several Google-owned sites like Picasa, YouTube and Google Reader. Notice that Facebook is missing from that list? On top of that, Buzz doesn’t allow you to push out updates to Twitter, Facebook or other social networks, which makes it even more of a walled garden than Facebook, Twitter or others. Social media is at least in part about openness and ease of sharing and Google Buzz simply doesn’t cut it on those two counts.

Finally, Microsoft recently announced that they would incorporate an optional Foursquare layer to Bing Maps. I blogged about this in a previous post, and the Foursquare layer is now a reality on Bing Maps (Visit maps.bing.com and click on Map Apps, then click on Foursquare Everywhere – you might have to install Microsoft’s Silverlight plugin for it to work). This kind of integration is something I would have expected from Google, not Microsoft. If Google hopes to remain the technology giant that they are, they have to be on the forefront of social technology. Microsoft and Yahoo already beat Google in integrating real-time information (Facebook & Twitter updates) to their search engines and this is just one more area where Google is forced to play catch-up.

Every company is bound to release some products that are duds, but it feels like Google has been experiencing more than its fair share of duds lately. On top of that, they’ve been happening on relatively big products. I’ll still keep using the Google products that I know and love and I’ll continue to try out any new products they launch, but if they keep taking missteps like this, it might not be long until Google is reminiscent of some of the past tech and search giants like Apple before the iPod and Altavista.