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Social Media Code Computerlove

What is social media?

By The Drum, Administrator

March 5, 2010 | 4 min read

Social media is a medium that brands are eager to employ. Cost effective and seemingly simple, how could it go wrong? Code Computerlove offers a best practice guide.

Instead advice needs to be based on integrating social media into agency culture and thinking. Social media isn’t the phenomenon - the shift in society, behaviour and the way we advertise because of social media is. What mistakes are being made?Social media channels and related tools need to be used to execute an overall communications strategy. They are not stand-alone nor should they be a set of tick boxes. Think of social media this way and you’ll end up with a Facebook page that says nothing about your brand, isn’t in keeping with the overriding brand strategy or other media campaigns at that time, doesn’t have remotely interesting content but is just promoting last season’s products, doesn’t really give users a want or need to join and therefore remains a lifeless exhibition of how unpopular and un-innovative your brand is for the world to search, view and comment on. It would probably be better if you hadn’t had bothered. Likewise trying to exist in every social network out there will have a similar result (never trust a company that has a long list of social media badges displayed on their site).Remember one of social media’s advantages is that it offers direct engagement with smaller more defined groups of people. Unless you’re targeting kids or bands for example, there is no need to have a profile on MySpace. 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. This 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.

Social Media Code Computerlove

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