I’ve been working in social for a few years now, and the last 2 years I’ve spent a lot of time with brands on Facebook. A lot of the brands we work with are active on Twitter, posting on average twice a day. Volume hasn’t ever had a negative impact on what we have done – we’ve adapted and learnt from everything we’ve created and strived to improve what we do to keep our audience entertained and informed.

Using the platform everyday gives us a lot of insight and experience with what does and doesn’t work. Not just on a tactical level but quite an in-depth personal level. What has become interesting (or difficult) is when Facebook’s behaviour changes. When something unexpected happened you’ll start by wondering what it was you did wrong. Did you post at the wrong time? Use the wrong media targeting? Or was the creative just not right? And then you start to notice, no, it’s not me – there’s something different about it, something has changed.

When you try to talk to Facebook you’re often met with denial and mentions of ‘a bug’. You’ll listen to them – they know best. But then you hear of similar experiences and explanations from other teams around you, and other teams in other agencies. We all work with this platform intimately. We know when it’s had a haircut.

Recently Facebook have expressed thoughts on pivoting their proposition, comparing themselves to mainstream media channels they are positioning themselves as a broadcast channel. Part of the reasoning is that there’s now more competition in the newsfeeds for brands to cut through – people have more friends and follow more brands than they did a year or two ago, so it’s harder to stand out and convert organic or low reach. Shifting back to the classic broadcast model of mass reach you’ll pay to be seen by the masses and by being seen by more you’ll obviously sell more. All you have to do is spend more. With Facebook.

It’s another new haircut, but you can’t help but notice this one – they’re coming to you and asking if you like it. The truth is, I’m not sure I do. For a long time they were always about engagement and deep and meaningful connections. But now it’s feeling like an uncomfortable shift, less about the user and being meaningful but more about the advertiser, and that’s just not social.

Having a Facebook page or a Twitter profile isn’t a means to an end. And simply stating that you want to “engage with your community” doesn’t count as a strategy. Engagement isn’t a strategy. It’s barely even an objective.

You wouldn’t just create a website for your brand. You wouldn’t start an advertising campaign without knowing first why you are advertising, who you are advertising to and what effect you want your adverts to cause. And you certainly shouldn’t start an advertising campaign as a silo; it needs to belong to a wider strategy that considers brand, tone of voice and long term goal. The same needs to be true of your ventures into social media, you need to plan for success.

Facebook and Twitter are channels, tactics, and you need to understand their role and place these tactics in your broader communications strategy. Until you are ready to do this, you probably should not set up a Facebook page or a Twitter profile

From: Leam-Taylor, Holly (UK – London)
Sent: 08 December 2009 11:50
Subject: Deloitte First year analysts Christmas Awards :D

So girls….

It’s been nearly 4 months at Deloitte so I think we should have some sort of Xmas awards ceremony for us ladies about the stuff that really matters at work i.e. gossip/ the boys! This probably massively violates the HR equal opportunities policy, but never mind! It’s all for fun and a bit of a laugh.

Ok, so the categories are below, please get your votes in asap, I’ll send out the results on Friday 18th Dec (that is all I will be doing that day as I will be SO hungover from the ball!) Any comments as to why you’ve picked a certain person that are particularly good/hilarious can be included, anonymously, of course ;)
1.) Fittest boy – looks
2.) Fittest boy – body
3.) Best dressed boy
4.) Boy most likely to sleep his way to the top
5.) Best piece of gossip you’ve heard so far this year
6.) Most attractive “older” member of staff (i.e above analyst grade)
7.) Boy with the best personality
8.) Most hilarious/embarrassing moment a girl has had
9.) The official Deloitte First-year Analyst Girls “Man of the year”

Enjoy thinking about it!
Much love to all

Holly xxx

The email has been forwarded through all the major financial institutions in London, and from them, major companies in the world. In just two days. Now the girl in question, Holly Leam-Taylor has taken down her Twitter and Facebook pages, probably trying to shy away from her new found internet fame. Just need to search google to see why…

One of the reasons that Facebook has proved popular was that it was a walled community. It was a place for you and your friends, not the strange guy who lives down the road. Facebook has been continually opening itself up, and in the process been alienating users.

The problem is that even if you follow someone of Twitter, no real information is given away. People don’t tend to add much personal detail to their Twitter profile, largely because they can’t. But Facebook is different. People share photos of their friends and family, they share personal information about their lives.

Sure, there are people on Twitter who post the intimate details of their toilet habits, but, the key difference is the atmosphere in which the content is published. Unlike Twitter, which is designed to be a public life streaming tool, and is used as such by the vast majority of users, Facebook has always tended to be more personal, there is a veil of personal security that you have when you upload to Facebook – you are sharing with your friends, not the world. By changing the default options, Facebook is eroding this sense of security. Whilst before you had to manually open your profile up to let other people see it, you now have to jump through hoops to stop complete strangers seeing what you’ve posted.

Facebook says that the reason they have decided to encourage users to make their content public is to encourage sharing, searching, and learning about people you don’t know. The problem with this is that people do not join Facebook to learn about people they don’t know, they join to keep in contact with the people they do know, and find the people they used to know.

It’s obvious why Facebook has decided to take this action. By opening up content to the public, they also open it up to search engines, and they can begin to play an important part in real time social search. And secondly, they become more like Twitter, which, in my opinion, they’ve been trying to do ever since they failed to acquire them back in 2008. In fact, to date, I’ve not seen a single major change in Facebook that hasn’t suggested they are trying to be more like Twitter. You just have to look at the massive shift in design to emphasize status update to recognise it.

The problem with Facebook trying to become more like Twitter is, most Facebook users never wanted to use Twitter in the first place.

Social media more than just levels the playing field; it puts the ball right in the consumers’ hands. The social web has allowed people to share their experiences and opinions of brands online. This kind of communication obviously happened offline before the Internet, but talking about a brand with 2 or 3 people around the water cooler or with the family over dinner is a vastly different scale to posting a message that is then available to several hundred contacts.

The power of the individual has never been greater: as Hird argues, with almost immediate access to their entire network “consumers can openly challenge brands in an environment where there is scope to make a massive amount of noise.”

It is this shift in power that is driving the revolution in branding and marketing. Companies can no long hide behind the branded message they broadcast, they have to have open and truthful conversations, they can no longer simply broadcast their message; they have to engage with consumers in an open dialogue.

The core facet of social media is to share information through social interaction using web technologies. And as such the same rules that apply to social interactions in the offline world, apply online. In order for two people to maintain a healthy relationship both parties must be clear about their intentions and remain honest to each other.

Companies and their employees must be completely open and have full disclosure with their audience. An attempt to pretend to be someone else or to hide behind false intentions will invariably be discovered and will result in serious damages to a brand’s reputation.

So why is it that employees are still trying to pull the wool over consumers’ eyes?

Without openness in your conversations there can’t be trust, and without trust there can’t be a relationship. And without a relationship, you’re screwed. This is a lesson that can’t be learned fast enough.