Pheed is the latest iteration of a social media platform – should you care?
Pheed are following the same route as Tout did and getting celebrity subscribers endorsing their platform and using it. Do you think it’s really them posting to their Pheed? Or perhaps their entourage/PR people posting? As a consumer, perhaps you don’t mind, because if you are a big fan of the artist or actor/actress, you will just consume anything to do with them. There are fanatics out there for sure that will just follow their idol, wherever they are posting content. One thing I noticed after signing up, is that only a few of the celebrity subscribers actually respond to any of the comments on their Pheeds. This is where I think people miss the point of social media platforms, even the likes of Twitter and Facebook.
These platforms are not one way communication channels. People don’t want to be talked at. They want a conversation – it might be with an idol of theirs, or let’s turn it around to business. Perhaps they want to engage with the company on a personal level to see whether they do want to purchase their product or service. Something that is often said, but rarely heeded, is that people buy from people. This is even more important in the online world. Consumers do not want to buy from brands, they buy from ‘John’ who responded to their tweet with the answer to the question within seconds. He helped them understand exactly how the product would work and assured them that there would be customer service on hand to help them post purchase. He may even have given them piece of mind that it would be him that would support them.
Some companies are afraid of social media, because they don’t want bad press out in the public domain. Well guess what, it’s going to get out there whether you like it or not. And if you are are reputable company, you should want to know when your customers are unhappy. It provides an excellent opportunity to turn a complaint into a fan IN REALTIME, in front of onlookers! However, this only really works if the platform is deemed ‘viable’ by the public. I understand the point of getting celebrities to endorse the launch of the new platform, but if they are not all going to respond on their Pheeds. People who are not raving fans of that particular celebrity will see no value in it. Having a famous person with 3000 followers and following 0 who doesn’t reply to fan posts, shows me that there is no engagement at all. And engagement is the key to success in Social Media; forget Likes, forget number of Followers, forget how many connections you have. To see a positive Return on Investment you are better off having a smaller responsive audience than a huge number that rarely interact.
Pheed is new on the scene – just like Tout was a while back – anyone using that platform for business gain? I’m interested to see what happens with Pheed, as it has the potential to be the new Twitter. But the question every strategist would ask – Why?
