Social Media Fundamentals

A while back we wrote a piece on social media for The Drum magazine, incase you missed it here are a couple of pointers we believe are important when considering ‘social media’

What should you consider?
Social media requires really simple rules of engagement. The difficult and complicated part is producing an integrated digital experience that engages with consumers where, when and in a way they want.

The main fundamentals when considering social media are:

Exchange Value of Content: People in networks exchange ‘stuff’ called social currency. This can be knowledge, links, images, jokes, videos, widgets, gossip; you name it, but people need something to share. It gives them a reason to commune and kudos within their network. Make sure you have content your social network wants to share and make it easy for them to do so, ‘share this’ buttons are a basic solution to this.

Integration: Make sure that all digital activity comes together as a flawless digital experience that complements any offline activity. Integration among any digital channels you use is also a good idea depending on what you use; Facebook connect, live twitter streams on blogs/sites (a good example of this is the New York Times) or access via mobile.

The new guidelines to creativity: If you want messages to work in social spaces they need to fit with the behaviours acceptable online: think honesty, playful, raw, experimental, unguarded, helpful, collaborative and personal. A good example of a brand’s social activity employing these themes is Mini Coopers’, Mini Space.

Monitoring: Just as you would conduct consumer research offline, online insights should be constructed from online research of what your consumers actually do and say online. You could pay for access to monitoring tools such as Radian 6 or BrandWatch but in our opinion you need to use more than one tool to get the best out of them.

Offline importance: Don’t forget online campaigns can start offline. Worrying about content? Crowd source videos from stunts or events, get them to capture something meaningful, or get the users to do something offline that will make them share online.

So, the aforementioned advice can bode you well in social media, but the real skill is coming up with a strategy for a client that uses social media in the most unique and innovative way, and which fits in with an overall digital experience.

~Katie