At this point we are seeing tens of thousands (if not more) of businesses using tools such as facebook and twitter. Many of these larger businesses (such as dell) have around a dozen employees tweeting and engaging with people via social media. Sounds great right? But are we going to get to a point of business social media saturation? Will we see more businesses (and employees) than customers? (and yes I know that customers work at businesses and are customers themselves as well, but the way an individual uses social media and the way someone that’s representing their brand uses social media are very different). In fact, I’d love to see a current breakdown of a platform such as twitter to see how many of the users are on there as individuals or as brand representatives.
We say that we want to engage with businesses via social media, but have we really thought about what this means in the long term?
Let’s say I’m a customer looking to book a flight somewhere in the United States, naturally all of the airlines that can solve my travel needs and that are on social media channels are going to want to help me out. So let’s say I’m on twitter and say something like “I want to book a flight to Vegas,” what do you think all of the airlines out there are going to do? Probably start sending me tweets trying to get me to book with their airline. Granted this type of behavior hasn’t happened yet, but it certainly will. Why? Because the airlines are all competing against each other online.
Imagine that almost every business is using social media tools such as twitter and facebook. Anytime you send out a tweet about anything that relates to a particular business you’re most likely going to get a barage of tweets. Talking about computers? Well then here come tweets from: best buy, dell, apple, toshiba, lenovo, acer, sony, and probably a dozen other computer manufacturers. Since social media is still new and since we definitely haven’t seen every business adopt this new medium, we really don’t know what to expect, but here are a few ideas:
- Eventually social media will have to take a more opt-in approach, meaning instead of companies being able to contact me when I tweet about something, I’m going to have to contact them if I NEED something (which so far looks to be working).
- We are going to need an in depth business directory of companies using social media tools and what industry they are in, where they are located, etc. That way when we want something, we can go out and find them. Furthermore social media platforms are going to have to help create these directories and I’m surprised that they haven’t already.
- Users may start heavily blocking/ignoring many of the businesses that jump on the social media bandwagon.
- Business or brand representatives are going to have register themselves as such when they create accounts on social media profiles, then users are going to select whether or not they give permission for businesses to contact them.
What are your thoughts on this?
Good post and to an extent I agree, the mechanics of engagement have not been thoroughly thought through yet – not enough cycles to uncover problems and pitfalls yet. However, the nature of buidling gravity around relevance withing social media should help to reduce the unwanted approaches.
Hi Julian,
I suppose time will tell what will happen with unwanted approaches, but you are correct, we definitely don't yet understand the mechanics of engagement. We're not really sure what we want or what to expect, but we will soon!
thanks for the comment
I'm not sure if I agree with this argument, Jacob. Is it any different from having a bunch of businesses in the phonebook, or online web search, or email opt-in list? Let's throw it over a sec. You run a social media or marketing consultancy, and someone on Twitter mentions a need for the type of services you offer. You go to tweet them, but you're stopped because Twitter has limited how many businesses and niches are allowed to reply.
Is this fair business practice? Does it help the customer choose the best deal, or the best deal that Twitter (or any other platform) allows?
Perhaps you can request that any companies replying use a hashtag for your response, then filter that out. I'm just not sure if limiting use is beneficial to anyone in the long run.
From some research I've done myself I have found that between 15-23% profiles contain something related to “brand” (including public peoples). You can see it there : http://www.dataintoresults.com/2009/06/a-twitte… . Please notice that the dataset was not quite representative of the twitter universe, but it gives an idea.
Twitter is not just a couple of friends which want to stay connected 🙂
I don't think limiting businesses from using social media is the answers (i didn't say that did i?). However, I do think that if we were to ever see the majority of businesses in social media that they would eventually consume and take over the space. The social web would become a giant marketplace.
thanks for sharing that, interesting stuff. are you planning on conducting other tests in the near future? might be an interesting way for us to collaborate.
thanks again!
I'm not planning to do more research on the subject (Twitter) as I am currently quite busy with my job. Nevertheless, I will contact you if that happens. One of my main issue is why doing that at all? Is there a real value in twitter mining? Could we learn something of interest? I'm not sure.
I'm not planning to do more research on the subject (Twitter) as I am currently quite busy with my job. Nevertheless, I will contact you if that happens. One of my main issue is why doing that at all? Is there a real value in twitter mining? Could we learn something of interest? I'm not sure.