John Gruber’s blog brought this to my attention: Top-notch Internet news site ReadWriteWeb, which the New York Times often links to, has been having a problem. Google searchers have been coming over thinking its Facebook! One of its articles ranks highly on Google for the search term “Facebook login”. This prompted ReadWriteWeb to post, in bold:
“Dear visitors from Google. This site is not Facebook. This is a website called ReadWriteWeb that reports on news about Facebook and other Internet services. For future reference, type “facebook.com” into your browser address bar or enter “facebook” into Google and click on the first result. We recommend that you then save Facebook as a bookmark in your browser.”
The post has over 1,500 comments, many of which are asking how to get to Facebook.
It’s a testament to the fact that in consumer electronics, customer confusion reigns. Confusion is instinct when it comes to technology.
Don’t be mad at them. This is what you’ve taught them with decades of complex, scary, highly-technical marketing and communications.
Here are some realities in today’s market:
- Many consumer still don’t know what to do with their digital pictures.
- Most people couldn’t begin to get the most out of digital camcorders. The digital video process is brutal — and often a surprise to consumers when they begin to use it.
- People have no idea what they’ll be able to do with a tablet device.
- Most people don’t know there are other MP3 players besides the iPod.
- Most people haven’t heard of Android yet.
All of these issues are the result of a failure in communications. As an industry, we’re terrible at it.
You must talk to mainstream consumers, not early adopters. You must do more than send out press releases. You must use mediums that moms and dads, and grandmas and grandpas use. I’m talking about television and radio. There are affordable ways of leveraging these broadcast medias, and buying commercial time is not one of them.
Make your messaging as simple as possible. Then make it even simpler.