Facebook, Birthdays, and Changing Marketing

Browse through nearly any marketing journal, and you will find talk on how Facebook and Twitter have changed (and in the case of Facebook, possibly birthed) the field of social media marketing.

I won't go into that whole discussion today; enough people smarter than I have spent more than enough words on it already, so you can Google them if you want to join that conversation.

I do, however, want to point out one tiny feature of Facebook that has changed our lives in a way that many marketers may overlook:

Birthdays.

Facebook has been the source of more birthday wishes than any other single tool I can imagine.

For example, of my Facebook friends, 99% of them are people I know personally (that is, I know and have met them in the flesh). Most of those 99% are people whose birthdays I would like to celebrate out of general love and goodwill, even though I might not see them or talk to them very often throughout the rest of the year.

But I have enough trouble remembering the birthdays of my ten cousins, let alone hundreds of Facebook friends.

Thanks to Facebook, I can "remember" the birthdays of each and every one of my Facebook friends. Since Facebook even notifies me of birthdays a few days ahead of time, it gives me a chance to buy a last-minute card or gift if I happened to forget an important birthday. But for the majority of my Facebook friends - those "Tier 2" relationships whom I do not see very often, who are friends but not close friends or family, whose birthdays they would not expect me to remember - Facebook's birthday notifications enable me to post a simple "Hope you have a wonderful birthday!" on their Facebook wall.

And on my own birthday, it is a special feeling to see a wall full of birthday wishes, some from people whom I have not seen in months, from whom a birthday wish is neither required not expected.

What are Facebook's birthday notifications really doing for us?

Facebook is enabling people to tell each other that they care. That they value one another. That they respect and appreciate one another's lives. That the people in their lives are important, even if they don't see one another very often.

It is a show of simple human kindness and caring. And in the kind of relationships that most of us have with most of our Facebook friends, this show of caring does not have to be a big thing. Just that unexpected "Happy Birthday" shows a little bit of love and consideration for one another.

That single purpose - showing that people care - is the core behind social media. We want to know that people care enough to notice us. That they like our ideas enough to listen. That they value our existence enough to converse with us.

That act of caring is what social media marketers must demonstrate in order to be successful, in order to really connect. What makes social media marketing different from many other forms of marketing, is that it enables marketers to stop doing all the talking. It enables marketers to listen to what the customer has to say. It enables customers to engage in the conversation with the brand and with each other. It provides a place where the customer's opinion matters.

The successful social media marketer recognizes this, and approaches social media accordingly. She engages in dialogue (not monologue). She takes time to listen, and to find out what individual customers care about. She recognizes the thoughts and opinions of her customers, and she communicates by her words and actions that her customers matter.

If you're going to engage in social media for marketing purposes, you must care about the customers, and then show them that you care. Otherwise you're just wasting everyone's time.