• Twitter, a water cooler chat. Facebook Page, a community canvass. On Twitter, people want to interact with you e.g. complaints and ideas for product improvements. Unless you are a news organization like CNN and The Economist or a celebrity like @Alyssa_Milano, @The_Real_Shaq and @BritneySpears, it’s hard to get away with just tweet-casting without being called inept user of social media. On Facebook, your community want to interact with you AND among themselves. So, it’s relatively easier to get away by not interacting with your fans. Facebook Page can be used by fans as a community wall, for public display of affection towards a brand. In essence, it provides user-created online context for fans to connect with one another, share thoughts and propagating the allure of the brand.
• Social media is interactive. So, be inventive. Toys r’ Us uses its Facebook Page to “to distribute coupons, announce unadvertised deals and solicit feedback.” Others used social media to announce arrival of new products e.g. fresh bakes from oven @AlbionsOven. Some use it effectively as a broadcast tool e.g. @cnnbrk. Depends on needs and context, social media can be used to support your brand building infrastructure or obtain customer feedback or source for talents or ..
• Easier to grow community on Facebook than Twitter? It depends. Coca-cola has the most popular Page on Facebook, with over 4 million fans; on Twitter, Coca-Cola is followed by only over 12,000. It’s the reverse for JetBlue Airways. It has over 1.4 million followers on Twitter and its Facebook Page with over 60,000 fans only. The world’s best low-cost carrier, AirAsia with 15,000-plus followers on Twitter but its Facebook Page is fast approaching the 100,000 mark.The EveryoneConnects campaign by TM started its Twitter and Facebook Page on 19th October 2009. Today, its Facebook Page with more than 23,000 fans but Twitter with just over 500 followers.
• Social media can energize both established and new brands. Blockbuster and niche brands alike can use social technologies for various purposes. Blockbuster brands refer to established brands like Coca-Cola and Nike and usually established over the years via traditional media. Niche brands usually with its band of evangelists. These brands can be either already established offline or those nurtured solely on social media space. It is common for companies to use traditional media to direct people to their social networks.



• Community Size Matters. Like it or loathe it, number of fans/followers is the overt indicator of ‘status’ in social media sphere. Those with low fan-base will tell you that they prefer quality and relevant people following us. But I bet they won’t mind if their fan-base grows thousand-fold, overnight. Also, look at the many ‘follow us to win’ contests out there! On social media, you have richness, in terms of engagement and interaction with your community. Reach, a.k.a. community size, matters too!

Images: Both Coke bottle and Carl’s Jr. burger images are used without permission.

5 Things You Probably Already Know About Social Media Use originally appeared on GreyReview.com on December 3, 2009.

Both using different tweeting styles. @ProtonExora is tweeting from first-person perspective (tweeting as Exora, the car) whereas @YouWillBeAmazed tweeting as third-person.

Twitter Pages of @ProtonExora and @YouWillBeAmazed

Observations

1. @YouWillBeAmazed is a better conversationalist.
   • The ‘unofficial’ tweets are far more engaging and informative. Out of 8 updates so far, none of @ProtonExora tweets starts with ‘@’. For @YouWillBeAmazed, 43% of its total number of tweets start with ‘@’. It’s broadcast versus conversation
   • There’s nothing wrong of using Twitter as broadcast medium. The hugely popular @CNNbrk (and many others) are broadcastweets. But in the case of Proton Exora (as a newly launched product and new brand), conversation would be a better mode of engagement.
2. In the laissez-faire land of Twitter, any voice can be as loud as the ‘official’ one. Unless a brand ‘owner’ initiate and manage conversations on Twitter (or in any social networks), others will fill the void and potentially become the ‘official’ voice of the brand.
   • For example, Coca-Cola Facebook Page is not originally created by the sugar water company but by two ‘fans’, Dusty Sorg (an actor) and Michael Jedrzejewski (a writer). The Page attracted 3.3 million fans and became the top brand on Facebook Page. It is only second behind Barack Obama, in terms of Fans. Now, the Page is co-managed by Coca Cola and the Page creators.
   • Currently, @YouWillBeAmazed is doing a better job in evangelizing the Exora brand and engaging Followers; Proton can learn a lot from it.
3. Comparatively, @YouWillBeAmazed page is aesthetically more appealing than @ProtonExora. If it wasn’t for the tweet that says ‘technically’ i am not the official tweet for proton!, probably many would have thought @YouWillBeAmazed is official voice of Proton Exora on Twitter.
4. For Proton, Facebook Page trumped Twitter. Fans on Proton Exora Facebook Page are ‘engaging’ the brand. To date, the Page has over 900 fans. The Page is populated by Proton-contributed updates, videos and photos together with Fans-generated contents.
5. Lastly, both ‘real’ and ‘fake’ voices of Proton Exora need to craft better ‘bio’. With the omnipresence of URL shorteners in Twitterville, posting full Facebook Page URL looks amateurish.

Conclusion

For Proton, it seems relatively easier to assimilate Facebook Page into its brand-building infrastructure, compared to Twitter. On Facebook, fans can communicate among themselves around a brand. On Twitter, its true potential is realized once the brand starts to engage actively in conversations. It’s about building and nurturing emotional attachment to the company through conversations. And it is quite challenging to achieve such goal if companies perceive social media as short-term episodic bursts of campaigns.

Let’s continue the discourse

Is building and sustaining a community on Twitter is harder compared to on Facebook Page? In the Malaysian context, considering there are over a million Facebook users in Malaysia compared to significantly lesser number of Twitter users compared to only less than 100,000 users in Malaysia (more 77,000 with with #malaysia in WeFollow directory). Is number of Followers or Fans the right metric to measure the effectiveness of social web initiative? If no, what other aspects should we measure engagements on social web? Leave your thoughts here or let’s converse on Twitter @limyh.

One Brand, Two Voices on Twitter: A Case of Proton Exora originally appeared on GreyReview.com on May 5, 2009.