How to Choose Between Facebook and MySpace

Some really great research is beginning to disseminate through the blogosphere emanating from the Personal Democracy Forum just held in New York.  In particular, is the user base and growth of the two largest social networks, MySpace and Facebook.

Northwestern researcher Eszter Harggitai found that MySpace’s users slightly declined or stayed about the same over a 0ne year period dating back to 2008.  In fact, Facebook’s traffic increased 97 percent and MySpace’s traffic declined 5 percent from a year ago, writes Riva Richmond, blogging for the New York Times.

Both Richmond and Harggitai refer to social media researcher Danah Boyd, who has uncovered important demographic trends with Facebook and MySpace users.

Research by Harggitai, Boyd and others boils down to this:

• Whites are using Facebook more and leaving MySpace
• Asians are using Facebook at very high levels and MySpace very little
• Hispanics are more likely to be active on MySpace than Facebook
• African Americans seem to be more evenly split between using Facebook and MySpace but are using Facebook slightly more
• Facebook users come from more economically advantaged families than MySpace users

Not commenting on the social stratification of the research findings, it is interesting for those who are running local political campaigns to take this data into consideration when putting together an online communications strategy.  Supposing there is finite time in a campaign, plus limited staff resources, it is safe to assume that a campaign cannot effectively be all over each social network and use each well (i.e. John Edwards in 2008).

Therefore, especially for urban and suburban districts, it seems practical to use this data in order to assist a campaign in choosing what kind of social networking strategy they will employ.  Campaigns have to ask themselves, does it make sense to use Facebook in a more predominantly African American or Hispanic voting area?  This research would indicate that would be a bad idea.  But, the realities on the ground are always a little different and must be measured for each case.

The lesson here is listening to statistics and going with the percentages.  Other campaigns have tried and failed, others have won.  Good campaigns listen to those lessons and put those findings to work to their advantage.

Looking at PitchEngine from Afar

Looking through my Twitter feed I came across a post that turned me on to PitchEngine.com. As someone who works in public affairs and has to pitch traditional media more often than I’d like (rather than helping clients publish themselves), I’m interested in ways that make traditional PR pitching a better process.

PitchEngine is trying to bring together PR pros, brands, and journalists.  The PitchEngine software then allows these groups to build their personal profiles and manage contacts, just like in any other online community.  PitchEngine goes a step further though by simplifying the process of sending the release with various attached media (pics, video, etc.) and has a well-organized, simple interface.

Oh, and the PR pros and brands (not sure about journalists) have to pay a fee for joining and using the services.

Not that there’s anything wrong with a fee based network, I just question PitchEngine’s ability to truly make PR pitching a better process.

I’m quickly finding out in public affairs that the strength of any good pitch has more to do with the story being pitched than any other factor.  In other words, if the story’s good, interesting and timely, it will get play.  Does it help to have relationships with journalists to help get published?  Of course.  But, then again, good relationships don’t guarantee publishing, it just increases the likelihood that your pitch gets read.

That’s why I look at PitchEngine and caution against PR pros looking to sign up and think their pitching will be that much more effective.  The same basics that would make someone successful using PitchEngine makes that PR pro a success without it.  Traits like, telling a good story (even when it’s uninteresting), knowing the audience you’re pitching to and brevity, are still foundational to good pitching.

I think handling media relations is best done through the PR person’s personal contacts and through social media activity.  Using email, Twit pitching, building relationships via Facebook and LinkedIn, and following/commenting on blogs are the right set of tools for an effective PR pro in today’s media environment.

We have the social media tools to allow us to succeed.  We just have to use them well and remember that there are no shortcuts.  It’s an old adage but true.

I’m skeptical of PitchEngine.  If anyone else can prove to me otherwise, I don’t see the benefit in it.

Smartest Tool on Facebook

In the last 12 hours, I have been inundated with requests to “donate my cause” on Facebook, reminding people to vote for either McCain or Obama.

This represents Facebook’s most powerful tool. Why? Think about how most people use Facebook. They aren’t going through profiles and messing with applications nearly as much as they are looking at their news feed page. That news feed presents peoples’ network updates.

When all the people in a person’s given network are encouraging people to make sure to vote and vote for the candidate of their choice, it presents a great push in online WOM.  It also presents a chance for things to spread virally.

The transparency achieved is also notable. People are publicly telling people who they are voting for. To the scale that this is happening in 2008, it is unprecedented.

Moving forward, we’re going to see a lot more “status marketing” on Facebook than widgets or apps.

New Data on Social Media Sites

Here’s MediaPost reporting on the most recent social media site traffic:

News Brief

Twitter Fastest-Growing Social Networking Site

Thursday, Oct 23, 2008 11:11 PM ET

Twitter, Tagged and Ning were the fastest-growing social networking sites in September, according to Nielsen Online. Starting from a base of less than 1 million visitors a year ago, each has at least tripled U.S. traffic since then. Micro-blogging site Twitter has grown almost fourfold from 533,000 to 2.4 million visitors. Among more established social networks, LinkedIn was the fastest-growing–nearly tripling its audience to 11.9 million. That growth rate helped the site for professionals this week close another $22.7 million in venture capital. In June, it raised $53 million. Facebook continued to grow at a healthy clip, more than doubling its traffic from 18 million a year ago to 39 million. MySpace remained the largest social network with an audience of 59.3 million, but its traffic has been essentially flat, increasing only 1%.–Mark Walsh

Facebook or LinkedIn for Public Affairs?

When sitting down with clients to evaluate which social network to get going on, people are starting to ask whether to go with Facebook or LinkedIn.  The very question represents a defining moment in social networking and marketing.  It signifies that the very social networks themselves are becoming differentiated enough to draw very distinctive utilities between each other.  These sort of differences might be the start of social networking fragmentation.  But, let’s leave that to a later post.

Instead, when looking at Facebook vs. LinkedIn, I find it helpful to ask the right questions and quickly size up the client’s intent when using social networks.

When working on a state political race, it become very clear to me that using LinkedIn was great at reaching out to specific audiences.  For example, older audiences or potential supporters we met at professional events, made a lot of sense to reach out to them using LinkedIn.  In fact, I always thought of LinkedIn as an entre to the candidate to develop deeper connections.

To me, LinkedIn is more like a static webpage.  That’s because the content is pretty static.  A person’s profile is basically their resume with a few other facts about a person.  CIO points this out in a recent article.  They explain people using LinkedIn can aggregate lots of loose connections with people, some they don’t even know, and still feel safe.   This is because LinkedIn doesn’t allow for people in a person’s network to find out a whole lot about them.

Facebook is much more interactive.  It shows peoples actions and is so transparent, one can learn a lot about people simply from observing them (of course privacy settings can alter this).  For events, sharing info and speaking directly with supporters, no doubt Facebook provides an advantage over LinkedIn.

At the end of the day, these different social networks are brands, like in any other category.  Think of LinkedIn as Polo (older, classic, experienced) and Facebook like Kenneth Cole (younger, hipper, stylish).  Inherently, these different brands attract users with different qualities or users of each site have adapted to the culture of these respective social networks.

It’s a good lesson when planning which networks to become active and how best to use them.

Non-Profits Using Social Media

There’s a lot of blogs discussing the best practices of non-profits using social media.  I’ll try to use this post to offer something different.

First, I want to share a really good social primer written by Jocelyn Harmon, a non-profit marketer, that I recently used to guide me with a client.

What I can offer is possibly the way to think about non-profits’ use of social media.  Many organizations will see social media success stories and want to jump on the bandwagon.  That’s all good but I caution against using social media without an integrated approach.  Social media marketing is a great tool but it must be executed like any other media strategy.

That means there is no such thing as a social media campaign.  Social media is an ongoing activity for the long term.  Community building takes time and for your audience to be active and respond positively to your social media outreach, organizations have to build trust and must demonstrate they are serious about using social media.  An organization cannot just open a Facebook page and say, “We’re here.”

Organizations have to ask:

-how can social media help us reach our marketing objectives

-how does using social media relate to our brand?

-how can we use social media to deepen engagement levels in areas that we are strong in and build our capacity in areas that we need work on?

Asking these big questions can help a non-profit use social media strategically.  Organizations who carefully plan and build their social media marketing will be the most successful.

Social Network Audiences Self-Segmenting

One of the most interesting microtrends occurring in the social media marketing world is the self-segmentation of audiences. Yes, Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn get most of the attention (as they should, since their numbers are so big). However, Nick de Klerk at the Pixel 8 Studios blog reports that there are over 700 online social networking sites.

This growing fragmentation is reminiscent of what has happened to TV with the advent of cable and satellite. Smaller audiences become aggregated around content that correspond directly to audiences’ behavioral patterns. For public affairs professionals seeking to engage folks who care about issues, this is a trend that we must stay on top of.

Reaching our target markets, engaging in conversation on our issues and finding advocates will become highly targetable in this fragmented social media marketplace.

Like anything else though, genuine engagement in these social networking sites is what is needed. Social media is great at building trust and conversation. However, it is also easier to weed out those who are just using the online space for self-serving purposes. We always have to be genuine when working with online communities. Bottom line, it takes time and patience – just like any relationship.