Monetizing social media.

Wish I had a sexier title for you and more fitting visual, but alas, nope.

There’s one phrase I hear way too much lately among more than a few media, agency and PR types: “How do we monetize social media?” Doesn’t matter what it is either. Widgets, apps or sites where you share little parts of your life—with 12 million others. (I offer a simple solution for another way to approach this a little later.)

Yes, brands and agencies are supposed to make money, that’s why we all do this selling thing we do. But that’s not important to the masses who use Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and every other person sharing stuff or hanging out with their friends online.

They don’t see one dime of revenue—why should they care about whether it makes money or not? They’re at those places to connect with friends, not your brand—something Toad talks about often. I bring up the monetizing part because it feels like there’s just too much focus on it, yet almost nobody mentions the obsession with it.

I’d rather define what success is for social media sites just a little more clearly.

Typically, the first thing you hear from brands or new media evangelists when a site doesn’t make money: it’s a failure. From the POV of the people running the site, maybe. You can look at YouTube before they got bought to see how this was almost the case. (As I recall, their traffic generated almost a million dollar per month server bill, yet they had no real way to pay for it and faced being shut down.)

But as far as the users of the site were concerned, it was a success.

Same with MySpace and Facebook. You couldn’t tell those users that the collective millions of views their videos got were a failure. They defined themselves, (and still do), by how popular they were online. For some, it was profile or page views. Still others, it was about the friends they added or how many ‘important’ friends added them. For Gen i/Text, this equals popularity and acceptance:

I’m more popular, maybe even better than you because my MySpace or YouTube page has more subscribers, friends or views.

Which means then one brand’s failure is another user’s success. If that’s the case, why not chill when it comes to immediately focusing on profitability. Make the experience, whatever it is, cool. Make it practical. Make it work.

That last one is as important as any other factor. Why does it seem a new Facebook app or social media site is released literally every hour claiming to do what the one it appears it was cloned from couldn’t?

What about spending more time getting it ‘more’ right than rushing to get it out there. It’s as if the attitude “Let’s just get it live and fix it later” is so engrained that nobody stops to question the insanity.

(On a side note, here’s a recent look at popular Facebook apps that do work, here and here. For some that didn’t, go here. And, for an even more in-depth look at the what, how and why things work the way they do on Facebook, read this developer’s approach to designing apps. Want even more stat porn showing popularity? Here ya go.)

Okay, nuff about specific sites or apps though because I’m not here to plug Facebook. This is about making a user experience people want to be a part of no matter which way they encounter a brand. For example, assuming I never saw an Apple commercial before, I would know as soon as I step foot in one of their retail stores, it’s a very cool place to be. Likewise, I may never go into a brick and mortar version of Zappos.com, but their online ordering/return process was/is hassle-free.

The Devil’s Advocate response: “Well, why not build in monetization up front? Why is that so wrong? It’s just business.” Maybe—if it can be done. Somehow though the cool part always seems to take a back seat when it’s just about profits.

So what’s my ‘brilliant’ idea after all that to ‘monetize’ this stuff? Simple. Change the way you view it: use social media to monitor what people are saying about your brand. In other words,

Listen.

How? By Googling “I hate” + “your brand” to see what people really think—not just what the agency tells you from skewed focus groups. (And, Google’s free of charge too!) Then, if you’re really committed to improve your product or service, address the issues you hear.

Know what? You’ll likely see less abandonment of your shopping carts because you improved your online checkout—after you read a complaint on a blog.

You’ll add free wifi to your stores not because it’s what most coffee shops both big and small have already done, but because half the people online were asking for it.

You may already preach to the choir of brand evangelists, influencers and advocates, fine. But don’t forget to go after the weakest link: the annoyed customers. You’ll likely gain more converts among that group because you improved customer service after they bitched about a truly bad experience.

You’ll stop worrying so much about how to make money with the latest social media whatever and fix the ‘gadget’ you already have in front of you—your brand’s product or service.

Monetization will naturally follow, no?

Tags: social media