The Industry captains of social media are up against a new challenge these days in trying to make their wonderful platforms useful for corporate America. After sitting through a couple meetings with Facebook over the past few weeks it was clear this is not something that is going to be easily fixed. The discussion started out something like this -
Global Brand – We are trying to understand how we can leverage your platform to create a consistent brand experience for our customers. How can we do this?
FB – Well we have a lot of great ideas cooking around unique brand experiences and here is an agency that we are working with who can help you create one.
Global Brand – Okay.. Agency, we’re not so much interested in creative however we are interested in designing a system that enables us to easily publish content across a myriad of markets in multiple languages. Have you done this before?
Agency – Well, we have a content publishing tool that we designed that enables us to “work around” the FB system design however we have never done this for more than 8 markets or have any language translation capabilities…
Me – FB / Agency, can you elaborate on your long range tech plans for addressing the issues around multiple countries and multiple languages?
Agency – We design future functionality around what our customers ask for (my interpretation – we don’t have any plans to develop a translation engine until we have a customer that wants one)…
FB – Our goal is to create a compelling user experience for the end user and we have developed an advertising model that enables you to “micro-target” consumers. The architecture and design work is being left up to our agencies…
Agency – Yes, this is where we come in…
Global Brand – Agency, do you have experience integrated your platform with our social media platforms (i.e. Orkut, Bebo…) or across YouTube and Twitter…
Agency – Yes we have worked with Twitter and can integrate this into the content publishing tool. No to the rest….
As I’m sure we can all agree, Facebook is an extremely compelling playground for brands. With over 300MM users spanning the globe it’s clear that it is not only the dominant player in the space but that it isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.
This area is truly still a “white canvas” for Brands willing to take a risk and do something unique. With that being said, there are only a handful of agencies out there that have experience with it. When looking to evaluate an agency to launch your Facebook social strategy, make sure to consider the following questions.
1. How many brands have you launched FB initiatives with?
2. Do you currently have IP in the space? If so, what makes your IP (and solution) unqiue and compelling?
3. What experience do you have working across multiple Geos and multiple languages?
4. Do you have a content generation platform? If YES
5. Does your platform manage multiple permissions from multiple administrators?
6. Can it flag in-appropriate content?
7. What experience does your team have with cross integration of other US based and overseas based platforms?
8. Can you show me a functioning application that is more than a “hot link” to an outside URL?
9. Can you provide reporting and trends analysis beyond fan, friend, and links growth? How should my growth compare to other companies/competitors in my industry? What are the benchmarks?
10. Do you have a direct relationship with the social media platform? How is your development team structured?
11. After you install my solution, how much additional customization and support will be required for me to activate a campaign?
12. What business model are you working off of? If this is a license deal, what value is your technology providing me?
13. Can I get the same functionality through a free platform or another provider?
14. What makes your solution truly unique?
15. Who are your competitors?
Global Brands, like those before you who have charted new territory, have perseverance and patience. Vet your agency partners carefully as you embark on creating a consistent brand experience across borders and languages.
Brian
