ISA Marketing & Sales Summit

Let’s say you run a day-care center and you’re tired of parents being late to pick up their kids. What do you do? How about instituting a fine? That seems like it’s logical and could be effective. If parents had to pay extra, one would assume that they would be more likely to be on time. But one would be wrong.

In January, 2000, Uri Gneezy and Aldo Rustichini published a study titled, “A Fine is a Price.” In this study, they followed six day-care centers in Israel. They found that, on average, there were seven or eight late pickups per week across the ten centers they were monitoring. At six of these centers, they instituted a fine for late pickups and the effect was immediate and striking. The incidences of lateness steadily increased over a four week period. Eventually, the average number of late pickups peaked around twenty – almost triple the original rate. What happened? And what has this to do with social media?

Mixed Norms

Gneezy and Rustichini attributed this to something they called an “incomplete contract.” The rules that were in place were sufficiently ambiguous that customers had to figure for themselves what was appropriate behavior. In those circumstances, we tend to fall back on social norms. Social norms are a set of unwritten rules that determine what is and is not acceptable behavior in social situations. However, in the case of the day-care experiment, instituting a fine shattered the ambiguity and replaced it with an economic norm. The parents no longer feared social repercussions. They determined that the convenience of showing up whenever they wanted was worth the price.

Oil and water courtesy of andredoreto on Flickr

This is an example of “mixed norms.” When we combine social behaviors with an economic situation or vice versa, we get unpredictable (and sometimes volatile) situations. Consider, for example, finishing a holiday dinner at your parents’ house. You compliment the cook(s) on a terrific meal and pull out your checkbook asking, “How much do I owe you?” Most people would be offended and might even throw a utensil in your direction. Dating also carries such risks.

Social media also carries such risks.

Social Media and Norms

Make no mistake. Social norms are in play in all social media channels. The main reason for this is that when it comes to social networks, the users are also the owners. This is not the case in most other media with which companies are used to dealing (e.g. television, radio, newspapers, even Google). And so their tendency is to dive into social media with their economic norm behaviors. The result is that people will automatically tune them out and unfollow/unfriend them. In a sense, the companies have placed a virtual fee on their social media presence. This fundamentally changes the relationship from a social one to an economic one. Game over, influence squandered.

And here’s the really bad news…

Mixing Norms is Irreversible

Back to Gneezy and Rustichini. After five months, the day-care centers rescinded the fining policy. However, the behaviors didn’t change. It turns out that once you change the relationship from social to economic, you cannot go back. It’s altered permanently and there’s nothing you can do about it.

This should give pause to companies currently or planning to be involved in social media. You had better get it right the first time, because you won’t get a second chance. So how does a company insure it’s following social norms? Well, there’s a four letter word that spells social media success; gift. Make sure the vast majority of the content you’re creating and sharing can be considered as a gift to your audience and you should be fine.

This post originally appeared on Telesian Technology’s What’s Working in Marketing Blog

I ran across this article, 9 Social Networks Your Business Should Be Using, and did a double take. Those of us who focus on the technology and manufacturing markets would be greatly misled by this list: 1. Facebook, 2. Twitter, 3. Foursquare, 4. LinkedIn, 5. YouTube, 6. Quora, 7. Flikr, 8. Tumblr, and 9. Meetup. This represents a very broad brush and is heavily biased toward the consumer markets. For those of us who sell primarily to scientists and engineers, we need our own special list. Here’s my two cents:

1. Your own company blog: Competition is stiff, especially from low cost producers around the world. Now, more than ever, it’s important for you to establish your expertise and differentiate your offerings in the market. A well done blog is the best place to start (after you have your e-newsletter program up and running, of course). There are a number of blogging tools out there, including the above mentioned Tumblr. But if you want your own domain and a professional look and feel along with ease of use, we recommend something like WordPress. For dirt cheap dollars you can set up your own domain, e.g. blog. telesian.com, and be up and running the first day.

2. YouTube: Your customers and prospects have as little available time as you. For marketing to succeed it needs to be short, sweet, and to the point to get their attention. There’s time later to present all the gorey detail that engineers need to see. But first you’ve got to get them hooked. For some time now, we’ve seen short (3-5 minute) YouTube video tutorials pull in top readership numbers…in e-newsletters, on blogs, etc. You need to figure out how to incorporate video production into your marketing process. It doesn’t have to look like it was Hollywood produced, but it does have to be decent quality. Start with a mix of talking head and pics of technology/products in action. But start now.

3. SlideShare: If you’d asked me 6 months ago, I would have put LinkedIn in the number 3 position. But things change fast on the Internet. LinkedIn is still a must-have tool for businesses in our markets (see below), but SlideShare is useful as a way to get your documents and presentations online in a friendly format. It also has become a destination in and of itself because of all the great material that’s posted there. I’ve heard a number of people tell me the search SlideShare for info BEFORE they turn to a search engine. That got my attention.

4. LinkedIn: This is THE social media site for business. While most of our customers and prospects will go to a company web site for information, they are finding it useful to get involved in LinkedIn forums to get their questions answered on specialized topics. Once you create your personal and business pages, you’ll want to look around for groups to join. I did a search for “laser” related groups and got a list of 56 options including photonics, SPIE, laser materials processing, medical lasers, and more.

5. Twitter: Think of Twitter as headline news. This is a new way to interact with like-minded people, be they network contacts, customers, prospects, industry influencers, etc. Tweet about new content on your web site, new videos, news from the industry. There are two challenges to Twitter: first, you need to find and encourage relevant people on the network to follow you; second, you need to post a couples of times a day to be most effective. Don’t overdo the quantity of posts or you’ll annoy your followers. But you need sufficient volume to rise above the noise.

Start with these five social networks. Get them integrated into your marketing program and post regularly. Once you have these down pat, we’ll talk about what’s next.