What do you do every day? Who do you like? What are you eating, reading or listening to and where are you doing it? Imagine being stopped in the street and asked these questions. What would your reaction be? Probably something along the lines of “mind your own business” or possibly stronger wording. The reason is you see no benefit in telling a stranger about yourself in such detail.
However if you were in the pub with friends, you would discuss these topics comfortable in the fact that by sharing with others they understand you more through common topics of interest. In fact, if you were on a blind date you would practically effuse all of this information as you try to paint a positive and attractive picture of yourself.
Welcome to the age of self-profiling
In the last 10 years, people have become accustomed to sharing information about themselves in return for perceived benefits. This has been the driver behind the biggest store of personal information in the world: Facebook.
More than a billion users record and share a multitude of events, actions, pictures, opinions every minute of every day - in May 2013 that included 4.5 billion likes and 300 million pictures daily. All of this information is tied to individuals and their profiles. This is what Facebook terms “Social Graph”, a web of interconnections between individuals and their likes, actions and posts.
No need for psychometric questionnaires, no need to analyse your credit card purchases, all the work is being done by the individual. Effectively we are running a continuous analysis of ourselves and recording the results, even if we are selective with what we choose to share.
Yes this means marketers will often find who a person would prefer to be rather than truly who they are, but actually this is a benefit. It is sometimes easier to sell products which fit with a person’s aspirations than those that point to the realities of their life.
Open Graph - a new dimension to self-profiling
The power of the Social Graph was amplified in 2012 with the launch of “Open Graph”. The trouble with profiling is that we need to know as many of a person’s day to day actions as possible in order to build a clearer picture of their personality. This is not easily achieved without surveillance which pushes the bounds of privacy, and only using the ‘Like’ mechanism limits the profile to needing an actual click from the user each time.
However with Open Graph, Facebook extended its capture of activities while still giving benefits to their users. By allowing third parties to create new actions within their platform, individuals were able to share much more with their friends (and subsequently marketers). For example, Spotify connects to Facebook to share which tracks you are listening to, in return you get to see what your friends are streaming and this gives you the benefit of music discovery through social recommendation. The same is being done with Netflix, AirBnb, Foodspotting, and many more.
We are back to the pub scenario, you are telling your friends what music you like, which films you watch, what you eat, where you go on holiday and more, all just by interacting with online services that you have already chosen to use.
This is a continuous digital conversation powered by Facebook’s social platform.
Don’t crash the party!
Now all this detailed profile information is a powerful marketing tool but beware – it is not the marketing solution in itself.
Let’s return to the pub analogy. There you are, discussing all your favourite music and films with your friends when a stranger, who had been listening to the conversation nearby, butts in tells you all that you should watch a film they made or listen to a band they’re in. It would seem rude and self-interested. You don’t know him and don’t trust him, so it’s not likely you will act on his recommendations.
The trick for marketers is introductions. Change the previous scene to one of your friends introducing the stranger - just before they start telling you about the films and music - and it all changes. Your friend trusts them, so they gain credit with you. But this initial trust can quickly be lost if the relationship is abused.
Facebook’s power is in the graph, both Open and Social. It is up to marketers how they take advantage of this power. They should treat it like a customer dating service rather than a portal to their personal profiles. Don’t be a consumer stalker.
This digital age offers the possibility of finding exactly the right customer for your brand, but it is up to you to form a lasting relationship. If you build trust with them then they will introduce you to their friends. As match.com states, 1 in 4 relationships start online.
By Richard Grundy, Co-Founder & Director of Techdept.
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