There has been a recent fervor of organizations trying to reach people via social networking sites. However, many of them seem to be missing the value that social networks provide. Sometimes the social networking sites themselves miss the point1. I want to point out some of the benefits of reaching out to people on the social networking sites and what types of technologies complement these benefits. For examples of falling short, I will use some of the presidential campaign sites.

Organizations are scared to miss the next big wave on the internet. And social networking sites, such as Facebook, are that wave. But just as many organizations continuously fail at providing solutions that actually have measurable results elsewhere on the web2, they are continually failing on social networking sites. For example, Wal-Mart got in the Facebook app craze just to make money and it turned out quite differently than they expected3. This is in large part due to an ignorance of what social networking is all about.

Instead of jumping on the band wagon for the sake of being there, organizations should ask themselves what they expect to get out of their efforts and ask if the social network has that to offer. One of the key benefits of social networking sites is that the people you want to reach go there to hang out. And if they like you, they’ll bring you along with them in the form of a badge or shout out on their profile. Think of the user’s profile as a t-shirt that you get to push new content to whenever you want. The user is wearing you on her sleeve, but you have to be respected to stay there. The best way to stay in with the people is to be worthy of respect. However, the common business practice is to trade some benefit for (ie buy) the pleasure of being on the user’s most intimate of areas. This will always produce suboptimal results and can sometimes backfire completely.

With social networking sites your organization is not just on the user’s profiles, but often on the user’s friends’ profiles. Your benefit of earning the respect of one person is that she shares you with all of her friends, but that means the cost of losing one person means you lose communication with all of her friends. It’s important to note that you reached all of these people on the web without them having to find you and visit your website. Furthermore, you can keep these people close without them ever visiting or revisiting your website. You have been introduced and your on your way to being a part of cosa nostra.

The benefit and responsibility with other push technologies is similar. For example, RSS allows you to keep your constituents current without expecting that they visit your site with any regularity. In fact, this is where many of the current presidential campaign sites have been quite presumptuous. Hillary Clinton’s blog4 expects me to hunt for her RSS feed, and the others are just as obscure. Only Ron Paul’s site5 lets you subscribe to the news section (and on the front page!), arguably more important than the campaign blogs. Whatever you choose to syndicate, make sure you are pushing it often enough and always at the highest quality to retain your constituents.

The presidential campaigns are making one good use of social networking sites. That is they are allowing communities to build themselves around the campaign rather than the campaign trying to build the community for them, but they are missing a crucial element. Instead of keeping all of your supporters in isolation, syndicate the news from Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter. Make all the supporters aware of the other supporters and invite them to engage. This can be accomplished simply by posting news or events from the social networking site to your home page. Did one of the supporters make a great post on MySpace? Let everyone else know about it. Don’t keep people confined to their social networks. Rather, leverage the evangelist supporter’s generated content to bring everyone together.

  • Allow people to keep current without having to visit your site
  • Push only relevant, respectful, and engaging content
  • Always treat people “never simply as a means, but also always as an end”6
  • Make sure what your medium delivers is in line with your goals and expectations

The sort of expectation for people to jump through hoops to find you and stay current with you or your organization is the opposite of what you need to do to successfully engage users on the internet. Instead, your organization should be something the user wants to be identified with and is proud to flaunt to his friends. Trying to buy your way into the user’s life only reduces your credibility because it shows that you cannot get in through your own reputation. Finally, once you have established a relationship with your user be sure to keep her and her friends engaged and proud to be a part of your message.

  1. Eisenberg, Bryan & Eisenberg Jeffrey Is Your Reputation Worth $15 Billion?
  2. Gorell, Robert How to Elf Yourself Out of Millions
  3. Gorell, Robert Can Wal-Mart’s Facebook Campaign Survive Transparency?
  4. HillaryClinton.com – Blog
  5. Ron Paul 2008 – Hope for America
  6. Kant, Immanuel Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals