Five Social Media Tenets Every Agency Should Embrace
This season, social is the new black. Fashion victim, fashionista: these are words not easily applied to me. However, I have learned one valuable lesson over the years by observing an industry that’s always on the lookout for the next big thing: if you wait long enough, past trends and patterns will make a comeback.
This is exactly to the case with social media right now. As all things social start to mature, the same evolution that took place in the digital marketing industry only a few years ago is emerging: social is fast becoming less about experimentation, and more about regular production. In fact, production is the key word in many ways, which I’ll come back to a bit later.
In recent months, a noticeable shift has taken place among the clients and prospects we’ve talked with at Big Fuel. They fall roughly into three categories: those still experimenting with social media, those using social media consistently as a tactical add-on to their marketing activities, and those trying to make social a more central, strategic component of their marketing efforts.
As we approach 2011 budget deadlines, more and more marketers are trying to switch gears and move from using social as a tactical add-on to making it a core component in their overall efforts. Small, medium and large companies want to know how they can streamline, automate, budget, and measure social media and social marketing. How can it move from a series of handcrafted singular projects to a more consistent, more repeatable, more predictable undertaking?
We have clear answers to that. The key challenge remains implementation.
Marketing integration may have been the Holy Grail for advertisers over the last 15 years, yet the agency world became increasingly fragmented during that period of time. Many agencies that initially dismissed digital as a peripheral activity are now bent on not making the same mistake again with social.
Agencies rightfully see social as central to the future of marketing and work to develop in this space as fast as they can. Yet each agency, each discipline, looks at social through a very narrow lens that only puts the emphasis on their original core competencies. And, this is what really spells trouble for marketers.
Back to the issue of production, as mentioned earlier: It is tempting to draw parallels between social content production/earned media on one hand, and advertising production/paid media on the other hand. However, the comparison can be misleading in many ways. There are at least five key differences about social that every marketer should bear in mind:
1) Forget one-size-fits-all messages targeting “lowest common denominator” audience. Recognize that fragmentation is here to stay, and embrace it at every step.
2) Frequency and freshness of content matters more than production values. Increase your execution capability and move to rapid-fire, low-cost production cycles.
3) Campaigns have a limited shelf life, but quality content is a valuable and reusable asset. Build your library for the long term and ensure that you will be able to do “re-runs.”
4) Stop thinking (and budgeting around) campaign flights and push marketing. Start thinking about ongoing engagement. Audiences can no longer be turned on and off on demand.
5) In a genuine two-way, real-time conversation, it is hard to separate the production arm from the distribution arm. Your brain is connected to your mouth for a reason.
Larger creative and media agencies have legacy economic models built around scale and size that make it difficult to adapt and operate profitably in a world of exponentially fragmented audiences and touch points. When it comes to social, the question is not whether “they get it,” but whether they can evolve to become as fast and nimble as marketers need them to be. Even web agencies, in spite of their digital DNA, can sometimes struggle with things like video production or labor intensive, low tech conversational engagement.
The long-predicted new marketing paradigm is finally here. Marketers need to start thinking, behaving and organizing themselves as content producers who treat engage consumers as audiences, instead of fully outsourcing this function to external publishers. Content is still king, after all.
It’s official: Social is now well beyond a passing marketing fad. Amid this environment, marketers find it increasingly challenging to differentiate brands, products and messages. The push for a constant flow of newness is becoming a key operational requirement – just like in the fashion industry. One thing is certain: more change is yet to come in social media marketing.
Read MoreChurch and State
My recent adweek article covered the topic of how social media and traditional digital media work hand-in-hand. You can read the article here, or at Adweek.com, enjoy!
Social media has grown into an irreplaceable marketing strategy, but it must work in concert with your corporate Web site
If Facebook were a country, it would be the third largest in the world behind China and India. Weighing in at a whopping 500 million users, the social media giant has just surpassed Google in U.S. market share, according to data from Hitwise. To me, the rapid ascent of Facebook begs the question: Do businesses even need to set up brand Web sites anymore?
You’d likely be wrong if you answered “no.” Social media has grown into an irreplaceable marketing strategy, but it must complement and work in concert with with your corporate Web site.
Brands should be taking a “church and state” approach to marketing on the Web. You want your Web site to be simple and to articulate what the brand is all about, so including corporate positioning and traditional Web site strategies is recommended. But manipulating social media is a completely different ballgame. The game’s motto? Stop selling and start engaging.
Many marketers are starting to think of their brand’s Facebook and Twitter pages as “social CRMs,” which is a step in the right direction to shifting from a one-way channel of communication — marketing directly to consumers — to a back-and-forth, conversational relationship with customers, fans, friends and followers.
The crucial, often ignored part is that social networks are not socially enabled customer-relationship management platforms; they are audience-relationship management platforms. This distinction is a crucial part of navigating social media in an effective way.
When it comes to your brand’s Facebook page or Twitter account, the key is engagement. You want your social media pages to be content-centric first and foremost. The content that powers your social media should be engaging on a level that appeals to your core audience. The split between “product stories,” i.e., “show me/sell me” via a corporate Web site, and “people stories,” or “help me/entertain me” via social media and branded content, represents the divide between church and state.
These two coexisting worlds reveal that the corporate Web site can’t die in the face of the social media revolution. Social media is a great catalyst for bridging the divide. In order to do this, you have to define your brand’s social identity.
Building a social identity means representing your brand in an engaging way, regardless of what you sell. To leverage social media as an effective bridge to your product, you must think outside the typical consumer profile and find a unique way to engage your core audience. You must think like a publisher.
Let’s look at an example. Your company sells fertilizer. Your brand’s corporate Web site is pretty straightforward: it includes details about the product, the unique benefits of buying your product, how to use the product and other company-centric details. These details fit perfectly on your Web site, but they do nothing to engage your core audience. Let’s be honest: no one wants to friend or follow a bag of fertilizer.
Your brand should use social media to demonstrate what you offer to the world in terms of value and value exchange. Staying in theme with your product, use your Facebook page to offer tips on general lawn care in order to help the consumer. Or, maybe, you upload the best user-submitted pictures of their gardens in order to entertain the consumer.
In the end, creating and sharing compelling content for social media channels forces us to think of brands as publishers. You have to grab the attention of your consumers before you can try to sell to them. Creating a
social identity and associating it with your brand bridges the separation of church and state. Now that you have the audience’s attention, feel free to sell.
Six Ways Brands Should Think of Social Media as a Party
I’ve been using this analogy for some time now and it seems to resonate with everyone who hears it. If you are a brand looking to connect with consumers through Social Media, think of Social Media as one giant party. Here’s why:
1) Social Media is one giant party.
Let’s set the stage.
Imagine the social web as one huge cocktail party. In one corner of the room, a group of moms are talking about education and parenting issues. In another corner of the room, a group of recent college grads laugh over Will Ferrell’s latest movie. Everywhere you turn, different groups of people are enjoying themselves, sharing stories, discussing current events, pop culture, trends, etc. All the groups are mingling, making new “friends,” and the most influential people in the room have the most “followers” hanging on their every word.
Sound familiar?
Social Media is a true reflection of society today–and what better representation of social behavior, fragmentation, hierarchy and influence than a giant party?
2) Lead with “people stories,” not “product stories.”
Marketing has taught us to always lead with our “product story”: distilling our message down to a “unique selling proposition” and driving it home with features and benefits. As a brand marketer, your first priority has always been to show or sell your product. And it works well–if you only have 30 seconds to sell your product through a message that’s blasted out into the world. However, if you walk into that party and the first thing you do is try to sell your product, nobody will talk to you and you certainly won’t get invited back.
You walk into the party and head for the group of moms in the corner. If you interrupt their conversation to talk about your “new and improved hydrating face cream” or your “ultra-absorbent paper towels,” chances are you will alienate the group or simply be laughed out of the room.
To become the life of the party you can’t lead with product stories; you need to lead with people stories. If you want that group of moms or those recent grads to listen to you, you need to enter the conversation on their terms. You have to start a dialogue with something that is important to them, not what’s important to you. Only then will you have earned the right to talk about yourself. People need to like you first, then they’ll ask what you do for a living.
This means it’s critical to have the right “opening line”–a way to enter the conversation that starts with the consumer’s agenda but can seamlessly migrate to your agenda.
3) Use content to make connections.
The right story, joke or anecdote at a party goes a long way, and social media is no different. If those moms are talking about parenting issues, turn them onto a parenting expert who can help with their problems. If those grads are laughing over Will Ferrell’s latest movie, give them something similar to laugh about or recommend another movie for them to see.
The right content will allow you to make instant connections. And that means you need to think of your fellow party goers as audiences rather than consumers. Like a publisher, you need to help or entertain first; showing or selling comes later.
4) Embrace fragmentation.
Just like a party, social media is made up of many groups. People with different interests, different likes and different dislikes. This means that you can’t use the same opening line with moms that you used with those college grads.
Every audience is unique and you should speak directly to each group. This means you may need a few different “opening lines” if you are going after different audiences. In the same way you would “work the room” at a party, the way to get scale in social media is to break your audience into segments. As you walk around having conversations with different groups of people, you naturally adjust your talking points based on who you are speaking with. At the end of the night you will have met everyone at the party; if you are interesting, relevant and sociable, people will remember you and be willing to learn more about you (and your products).
5) Leverage the influencer.
Have you ever walked into a party where you didn’t know anyone? It’s not impossible to meet people, but you certainly have to work hard at it.
Now, what if you walked into the party with the most popular kid in school? You get instant credibility, everyone in the room knows who you are and talking to them becomes that much easier.
Simply put, leveraging the right influencers makes you “cool by association.” You don’t have to work as hard meeting people, you get to talk about yourself more and instead of trying to figure how to start a conversation with people, they will come talk to you.
sBrands are obsessed with impressions. For them, it’s always been about reach and frequency. Well, when it comes to social media, the name of game is engagement, not impressions.
If you walked into a party and just stood against the back wall, people might “see” you standing there. You may even make eye-contact with a few of those moms you so desperately want to talk to–but what good will that do?
You could go to 1,000 parties and stand against the wall at each one of them. Eventually people may recognize you–but they won’t know anything about you and there’s still no basis for them to have a relationship with you.
The Social Media Party is not about making eye-contact (impressions); it’s about shaking hands (engagements). It’s about meeting people, talking to them, sharing with them–it’s about engaging with them and participating in the conversation.
Final Thought
The party analogy is a whimsical way of saying that brands can’t treat Social Media the same way they treat other mediums. For the first time in history, brands are trying to navigate a two-way channel of communication. This means they can’t talk at consumers. Instead, they need to engage with audiences. Social media requires a value exchange between the consumer and the brand.
So when it comes to developing successful social media campaigns and programs:
1) Pretend like you’re getting dressed up for a giant party.
2) Lead with people stories, not your product stories.
3) Use content to make connections.
4) Try to align yourself with the “in crowd” so people will want to talk to you.
5) Don’t just make eye-content, shake hands with the people you want to meet.
Video Best Practices: Part 2 – First Came Story… Now The Strategy
This is the follow up to last weeks article covering online video best practices — here’s an excerpt and link to the full article is below:
ADOTAS — So we talked last week about the importance of content, and we showed you a few examples of online video that delivers with a strong story.
Now you have hit all the important points, element of surprise,thrown in a few laughs, some subtle sex appeal, and now you wait forthe eyeballs to come to you. And…nothing. Outside of views fromeverybody in the office, and snickering rivals, you’re barely a blip inthe forest that is YouTube.
Link: Read the full article at Adotas.com
About Me
Proud father, devoted husband, Founder and Chief Creative Officer of Big Fuel, a full-service marketing and communications company based in New York that takes brands from Content To Commerce.
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