Aug 1026
Every week, I check out the usage reports for the Matrix Group Web site and blog. I also look closely at the analytics reports from Facebook for our Facebook fan page. In the last year, traffic on this blog has overtaken the traffic on the public Web site. And as we increase the number of fans on our Facebook page, our interactions have grown steadily as well.
A recent article in Ad Age explores how some of the top consumer brands have Facebook pages with a fan base and interactions that far outstrip that of their official Web sites. Starbucks has 12.9M fans; Coke has nearly 11M fans; Oreo has 8.9M fans. Of the companies in the article, only Starbucks has steadily increasing Web traffic.
All of this got me thinking: What happens when an organization’s blog, Facebook, Twitter or other social media page gets more traffic than the official Web site? Is this the ultimate goal for marketers? Is traffic on a social media site worth as much as traffic on a company Web site? Does this increased traffic ultimately lead to more customers and sales?
I have clients who worry about redirecting traffic to social media pages, for fear of losing control over the conversations, not owning the Web property, or that the interactions are not quite official enough. Others hold their social media stats in the highest regard. Most of us wonder what it really means when somebody chooses to “like” our fan pages.
How to make sense of all this? Here are some thoughts:
Jul 1001
10 days ago, the Matrix Group Facebook fan page had 280 fans. As of tonight, we have 576 fans, more than double our starting number. How did we do it? We launched a campaign and created an incentive for people to “Like” us.
The Background
Matrix Group has had a Facebook fan page for a couple of years now and we had been slowly building up our fan base. We did all the usual things to generate new fans: we let our customers know about our Facebook page, we linked to it from our Web site and blog, we asked staff to invite their friends to “like” us, we included the link in staff e-mail signatures, and we asked our Twitter followers to fan us.
I had recently read an article about how the Weekly World News got to 40,310 fans in 4 days (up from 3,244 fans!) and got inspired to launch our own campaign. Weekly World News offered an exclusive video, they changed their ad daily, they did A/B testing on their ads and they leveraged their huge user base. But what kind of incentive could we offer? Unlike Snapfish, the photo printing site, which recently offered a coupon for a free 8 x 10 photo collage for “liking” its fan page, Matrix Group doesn’t have products to offer. And we don’t have a customer base of tens or hundreds of thousands of people.
The Campaign
We decided to use good, old-fashioned corporate philanthropy to incentivize people to “like” us. The campaign was incredibly simple: we would donate $10 to a specific charity for every new fan we got between June 21 and June 30. We selected the National Park Foundation’s (NPF) Disaster Recovery Fund in the Gulf to be recipient of our campaign. NPF is a Matrix Group client and the entire Matrix Group staff, like the rest of the country, is upset about the Gulf oil spill. Selecting this fund only made sense for us. BTW, we put a time limit on the campaign because we know that people are more likely to act when they have a deadline; hence the June 30 end date for the campaign.
Read the rest of this entry
Apr 1014
I got an iPad last week and I’m already in love with it. Yes, I already have an iPod Touch and I’m running a lot of the same apps on both devices, but somehow, the iPad experience is new and different. Is it a tablet PC? Not quite. Is it a Netbook? Definitely not. So what is it and why do we need one? More importantly, why do we want one?
I find it fascinating that Apple has managed to capture the zeitgeist of our age and intuit our desires for computers and devices. And yet, in a review of the iPad, Time Magazine reveals that, “(o)ne of the things that makes Apple unique is that it never holds focus groups. It doesn’t ask people what they want; it tells them what they’re going to want next.”
So how does Apple know what customers will want? And what lessons can mere mortal companies learn from Apple’s product development process?
A few years ago, the MatrixMaxx team at Matrix Group was developing the product road map for the coming year. A couple of us were arguing for a total redo of the system’s user interface. We also advocated a lot of new reports that basically repackaged data already available through exports. The rest of the team argued that clients weren’t asking for these enhancements and it would be risky and a lot of time for little benefit to move forward with such a radical overhaul of our association management software.
After a lot of bargaining re: scope and timeline, the entire MatrixMaxx team agreed to a redesign of the system’s user interface and a new export/report framework. The effort ended up behind schedule and it introduced a lot of bugs into the system. And yet, when the dust finally settled and we got the bugs under control, the end result was fabulous and clients loved it. The new interface makes it much easier to find information and gave the product a new vibrancy. The export framework has been universally applauded by clients.
Read the rest of this entry
Mar 1011
In the last twelve months, Facebook has made some major and minor changes to its interface. Each time they did this, there was hundreds of blog posts decrying or applauding the changes. There’s even a group called “I Automatically Hate The New Facebook Home Page.”
Why do we get so upset when Facebook changes its interface?
In looking at some of the blog posts and news articles, I can understand many of the complaints. For my part, I cannot figure out the difference between News Feed and Live Feed. But I love that it’s easier to get to my Inbox and see which of my friends is currently online. I also think that Facebook generally does a great job of explaining why they have implemented specific changes. I thought this Guide to the new Facebook Home Page was especially good.
Psychologists tell us that most humans are averse to change. With over 350M users, any change then to Facebook, no matter how small, is bound to upset some segment of the user base. And if just 1% is unhappy and vocal, that’s still 3.5M people. If 0.1 were unhappy, that would be 350,000 people!
All of this got me thinking. Matrix Group is in the business of redesigning Web sites. We work with clients who want to redesign their sites for all kinds of reasons: name change, the navigation is not intuitive, the company’s focus has changed, yada, yada. But if Facebook users are any indication of how averse we are to change, no matter how rational, articulated or needed, there is always going to be a segment that is unhappy. This unhappy user base may be vocal about it, which I think is a good thing because then you have an opportunity to respond to the concerns. If the user base is unhappy and silent, then you’re in trouble because you don’t know you have a problem.
Read the rest of this entry
Dec 0911
What do you do if you make candy, most of your sales in grocery stores are from the checkout lane, and RFID is poised to eliminate checkout lanes?
I attended the holiday reception of the Grocery Manufacturers Association earlier this week. In addition to mingling with GMA staff and other sister association staff, I got to meet reps from several GMA members, including Tom from The Hershey Company. I told Tom that Matrix Group has got to be the biggest buyer of the dark chocolate Hershey’s kisses (the dark chocolate kisses are wrapped in purple foil). Purple kisses are a staple at nearly every Matrix Group meeting because a) they’re purple and b) meetings always run better when there’s chocolate involved.
Tom reported that Hershey’s chocolate is doing well because even during (or perhaps because of) the recession, chocolate is an indulgence most people can afford. I asked him what’s new in the business of candy/chocolate marketing and he said candy makers are in for a rough ride in the next few years because the grocery store user experience is changing dramatically. Consider this:
- Most candy sales in grocery stores come from the checkout line. Why? Because most people avoid the candy aisle, especially if they’re moms with kids. So the checkout line becomes the most important place to market candy.
- Grocery stores have been experimenting for years with self-checkout. Shoppers Food Warehouse has had self-checkout for years. Tom says we should expect self-check-out to be more common in the future.
- Even with self-checkout, there’s a check-out lane. BUT, RFID promises an end to the checkout lane as we know it. Last year, for example, Microsoft announced a digital grocery cart that lets shoppers access grocery lists created at home, receive targeted coupons, and scan products as they go into the cart. With the digital shopping cart, the checkout lane becomes a payment lane; no more waiting, no more scanning.
Yikes and wow! So if you’re The Hershey Company, Mars or Wrigley, what do you do? What kind of R&D and marketing initiatives do you start developing now — for the day when checkout lanes are gone forever or at least changed dramatically?
Read the rest of this entry
Aug 0925
From homemade movies on YouTube, to movie and book reviews, comments on blogs, and entries in Wikipedia, user-generated content (UGC) has changed the Web forever. I can’t imagine the Amazon shopping experience without comments and ratings from other moms, the posts from the 500 or so people I follow on Twitter could keep me occupied and interested all day, and I thank God every day for the thousands of homemade Thomas the Tank Engine movies on YouTube that keep my five-year old enthralled on a rainy day. Mashable reported that more than 82 million people in the US created content online in 2008.
So how come most organizations shy away from incorporating UGC on their sites? Read the rest of this entry
Apr 0913
In my last blog post, I referenced the content strategy that the marketing team at Matrix Group has developed to keep our Web site and social networking pages fresh and interesting. Several folks asked for more details on our content strategy, so here you go.
Our communication/conversation strategy has several elements:
- Communication vehicles. We created an inventory of all the ways that we use to communicate with clients and prospects. Our inventory includes: the Web site, e-mail newsletter list, blog, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, and e-mail discussion lists.
- Communication schedule. We have mapped out a schedule that delineates what we will post or send out every day, week, month, and quarter. For example, we strive to tweet every day, update our Facebook page twice a week, and post new blog entries twice a week.
- Content strategy. We believe that it’s important to NOT post the same stuff across all channels. For example, on the Matrix Group Twitter account, we tweet about association/non-profit news, how companies and organizations are using the Web and social networking in interesting ways, cool sites, Web standards, site and application launches, job openings, Matrix Group events, and fun stuff going on around the office. My personal Twitter account (@jmpineda) is different; I will post personal updates, sites I love, business news and trends, cool gadgets, blog posts and Matrix Group events. You’ll notice that there is overlap in what we tweet when it comes to Matrix Group; otherwise, what we tweet between the two accounts is very different. That’s intentional; we want our followers to have a different experience on each Twitter account.
- Tone and voice. Our Creative Director, Alex, says tone and voice are very important, no matter what the vehicle, so we have guidelines for the writing across our sites and pages. Our updates are always professional, not formal but not too casual either, friendly and warm.
Read the rest of this entry
