Social Media

Is anything in the world truly free?

Reading this on a blog for an agency that lives and breathes social media, I imagine a lot of eyebrows going up. But no, really, I ask you, is anything in this world truly free, especially if it is a piece of your creation, a brainchild of yours, that you as the avid user may have posted on one of many social media channels?

Word on the digital street is that the web 2.0 may have been the new kid on the block a little while back, but now has been wholly joined the ranks of marketers who have pushed boundaries to drive the presence of brands online. This was avidly followed up with direct content marketing where brands would have been involved in the creation and dissemination of content that sought to engage and retain current as well as potential consumer basis. This, with the advent of social media networks has propelled individuals to the forefront of creative processes, where each user has the creative space to be content authors, and disseminate content within community of their choice, amongst a large audience, with the potential to create an impact on other users. Which brings us to the next big kid on the block: User Generated Content.

It’s all in the word of mouth, quite literally in fact. User Generated Content (UGC), briefly defined is digital content that is created and published by a social media user on a social media platform. UGC can be wholly original in creation, such as a Youtube video, adaptive, such as a rendition of a Youtube video, or a transformative, such as a Facebook update that is derived from the rendition of the Youtube video. Well, now that the big words have been explained, we now ask the question:  Why am I reading this?

As a digitally savvy marketer you would know that, UGC, especially leveraged through social media channels can greatly increase the awareness and assimilation of a brand’s presence in several ways. Firstly, generating content that is rich with customer experience and testimony actually increases the legitimacy of the brand.  Secondly, UGC ups a brand’s visibility through optimization of page rankings in search engines. It does not end there. UGC can also help transform a brand into a trustworthy entity, where consumers can connect with the brand through the experiences of other consumers and users.  This serves to increase engagement with a brand as consumers keep coming back to interact on a platform that doesn’t require them to physically meet, turning that platform into an online community.

So here’s the long, or rather the short of it: Who owns the content that is generated by social media users, for a social media channel, but for a brand that has a presence on a social media channel? In other words, if a user, for example posts a video talking about their experience of a brand, on a brand’s online community, such as a Facebook page or Youtube channel, does any entity besides the user him/herself have the right of ownership of that piece of content. This may not be significant perhaps for the giant social media network, but this is significant for the user who created the content, and brand for which the user has created the content.

My objective behind this rather long-drawn piece about UGC is not to give answers about the rights and responsibilities around content ownership, but to raise crucial questions that can affect the way a brand is marketed on social media channels where a community contributes to that brand’s identity, as well as how users come to see social media. So here are a few questions:

• If ownership of content created for a brand is attributed to the user that created the content, does that make social media a profitable platform where content will be bought and sold between a brand and its consumer if a brand sees an advantage in doing so, thus denying the fact that social media is truly free?

• Conversely, if ownership of content created for a brand is attributed to the brand and not the user, does that mean that the user then loses their freedom to express their loyalty to any brand, or entity lest they lose authorship of their content?

• Or maybe, lets say, that according to various TOCs by several social media platforms, any content created on that platform whether by the brand or a consumer can be attributed to the platform. Would that come to undermine the freedom of interaction between a brand and a consumer in an online community?

So this, in conclusion, brings me back to my original question: Is anything in the (social media) world truly free?

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The beginning of any good social media strategy is rooted in research. Before any brand or organization decides to embark online or move forward with a new idea, it’s essential to understand what’s already out there. Who is the audience and how and where are they already talking?

Looking at the stats, the “where” will almost always include Facebook. Though it may not be the primary platform to meet every organization’s objectives, the truth is that Facebook is the behemoth. It’s the largest social network in the world, with 155 million users in the United States alone, an audience that spans all ages and demographics, visits the site multiple times a day and shares billions of pieces of content . That’s not to be ignored.

Too easily though, Facebook, the giant, can be overlooked. The majority of Facebook’s content is private, which means listening tools, such as Radian6, cannot access all of the information. Since these tools can only pull in public status updates from Facebook users who keep their privacy settings open to the web, results frequently show little conversation from the major platform. The findings skew more towards platforms such as Twitter, where more users keep a public account.

To avoid missing such a key part of the puzzle, social media strategists need to get creative in how they dig in to Facebook’s data. I recently stumbled upon an article in TIME which shared how academic researchers are tapping into Facebook. The story cited that the number of academic papers referencing the site in the title has gone up 800% over five years. Through scientific methods, researchers are using the wealth of information on the social network to study specific, niche groups or more closely observe societal behaviors. After reading about these examples, I realized that social media strategists should be considering research on Facebook in the same way.

Coming from this mindset, here are a few ideas on how Facebook research can be expanded:

Survey your target audience: A traditional and powerful research technique, surveys provide firsthand insights on awareness and behaviors, and tools like SurveyMonkey simplify the setup. Use Facebook advertising to target a specific audience based on the near-infinite range of demographics and interests listed and provide an incentive for users to participate. You can also use Facebook Polls on your brand page to survey fans on a smaller budget.
Examine relevant pages or groups: Facebook’s pages and groups gather people online based on shared interests. Look for active ones that are relevant to your target audience, and do manual research to find observations from posts or comments over the past month.
Learn from your fans: If the brand already has a Facebook presence, mine the page for information! Don’t just glance through likes and comments; take the time to measure and examine how fans are responding (manually, if necessary). The ability to quantify this information will help clearly justify the direction of your strategy.
Take advantage of competitor pages: While there won’t be access to Facebook Insights data, the public wall and comments on competitors’ Facebook pages contains valuable knowledge to gain. Invest the time to manually track sentiment, topics of discussion or overall engagement and compare to your brand.
Without the abilities of a listening tool, research on Facebook will require more manual involvement and, therefore, time and resources. However, the opportunities on the platform make it essential. In the end, smart research to inform smart strategies will reap the reward.

What research methods have you found effective to learn from Facebook?

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10 days into 2012, I decided to look back at the social media scene in the Middle East and evaluate the year that was. 2011 brought its share of the good and bad, but it seems that unfortunately, the worst is not over yet. This post, comes as an attempt to recognize and curtail some of the “bad” which translate into malpractices within our industry.

Nonetheless, I hope to stress that 2011 was marked by several positives, various innovations and advancements in the industry,some of which include:

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