Building a social media campaign is defenitely not a cookie cutter thing. However, we’ve identified 3 key parameters to consider in order to get a better adoption:
1 – Content - must be entertaining, fresh, informative, and original. Jenkins strongly resonates with our vision: “content is introduced into a social network only if it inhabits characteristics that will help define the identity of the participants sharing the content and/or their relationship with this community”. In other words, people share content if it articulates their very own individuality and “social” status in the network.
To make this happen you have to start planning your social media campaign by finding the very unique connection that can live between your brand and your consumers. This can exist in different layers, different markets but even in that case, the authenticity of your message, attitude should remain consistent.
2- Context: a place to start or join a conversation, ie: a fan page on facebook, forums, blogs, a Youtube channel are some contexts. In order to identify the right contexts, you should look at building strong personas that will provide you with consumer insights. Raising awareness will come from navigating outside of your “industry” in order to be in-sync with your consumers’ online journey.
3 – Contamination: pieces users can steal and spread, take with you. Pieces that are original, unique, and useful. Pieces that are talk-worthy and true to your brand DNA. ie: podcasts, illustrations, images, videos. The more visuals you have the better it is, Internet content is “scanned” more than it is read. You should consider your consumers’ as multipliers of your information. It’s also important to consider the activities made on social medias, photo sharing remaining the first activity.
For more details I invite you to read the Wave 4 Power to the people research provided by Universal McCann, here.
Opening up that conversation means you have to set up a team in charge of managing content production, context identification, performance follow up and seeding (contamination). You shouldn’t start if your company is not ready to embrace it by allocating: time, budget and resources.
But remember, doing it right can deliver very satisfying results!
Post by Isabelle Quevilly, Oct 29th
Tags: contamination, content, context, social media, wave4
Here are my two cents.
The context you speak of is only the context of the touchpoint not the interaction. The “venue” would be a more appropriate word.
I think the Context is far more than just a “place to start or join a conversation” It is everything that embodies the experience.
Hi Issam,
Sorry for the delay, I agree that context doesn’t reflect the interaction dimension but speaking of venue sounds like a media where actually this is something alive, that’s happening between consumers and brands. I like the nonlinear, unpredictability that’s embedded in the notion of context. My point here was really to emphasize that you’re identifying conversations that are already going in order to really stay away from the traditional perception of ‘media’. We totally agree though that the wording doesn’t reflect the interactive part of that thing, thanks for your feedback :)
Isabelle