Value in Social Media

The recent AIMIA Social Media workshop I attended really got me thinking about the way in which advertisers are truly utilising the value of social media.

For starters, we live in a world where every consumer wants to consume content when they want, how they want and where they want. We all love that feeling when the MSN Messenger/Hotmail notification pops up telling us that we have a new Facebook notification. Has someone written on my wall? Has someone invited me to an event? Has someone from the past, perhaps an old school buddy, asked me to be their friend?

Do Tooheys want me to sell beer to my mates? Does a radio station want me to tell my friends I am a proud listener of their morning show show?

Has a brand asked me to be their knight in shining armour?...

You get the jist. As humans, we all take pride in the brands we consume, otherwise, we wouldn't be consuming them. I am more than happy for my friends to know that I wear Tsubi jeans, or that I love the crisp taste of Super Dry, or my favourite film is Knocked Up. Right now, the Facebook guys in the US are just starting to take advantage of this on a very basic level with granular keyword targeting allowing advertisers to buy relevant keywords listed on a user's profile page.

Contextual targeting is here to stay. Clients especially love the ability to ambush a competitor's keywords. But what we are not doing and should be doing is really getting consumers excited about working with brands through social media. I am talking about a direct relationship that is BENEFICIAL FOR BOTH PARTIES.

Let's take a banking client - say Commsec. Where all banking and finance clients currently FAIL is that they lack the ability to resonate with my generation. At the end of the day, all I want from a bank is that they keep my money safe and they grow it. In fact, I'm with NAB - not because I've been saturated with advertising, but because my mates recommended their Student Saver program when I was at uni. More often then not, especially with financed related products, we seek influence from our friends, family, work colleagues etc.

Imagine a social ad that tells your friends - that not only are you with NAB - but NAB helped you buy your first car or that NAB helped you put a mortgage on your first home. TV ads that try and portray a similar scenario have one thing lacking. If you don't know the people who were helped by NAB, why would you trust them? I mean after all, to most people, NAB are just a big conglomerate out to rule the world.

The fact is that advertisers can leverage a consumer's trust in the people closest to them. This is why social media is such a powerful tool and for many advertiser's, will be the primary source of media spend online in the not too distant future.

In the last month, I've had about ten friends buy the iPhone. How do I know? Well they told me on Facebook - either through their status notification or their excited wall post talking to me as if they have just won the lottery.

Julian Cole, ex-digital strategist at NAKED brought up an interesting point about starting a conversation, listening and then responding. He is spot on. However, my question to him is, as an advertiser, how do you truly end a conversation? Consumers are not going to interact with your brand forever?

I would like to also add that my belief is that in all three stages of the social media process, the advertiser has to really give the consumer something of value. Value in social media is CRUCIAL. Without value in social media, there really is no point.

A perfect example of an advertiser utilising social media by truly giving value to its audience was a youth brand I worked on. . I had the pleasure of actually working on this campaign in late 07/early 08. They came to us with a brief that screamed 'Facebook'. Their primary objective was to increase audience numbers with trial for new users via online streaming. Working with the client and media, we came up with a simple Facebook application that utilised RSS feed technology. We "tuned into their world". Music is such a powerful tool and we saw an opportunity to give the user something of value. We gave the user the opportunity to stream music live to accompany time spent within the Facebook network. These users were spending up to 30 minutes each time they would log on.

We gave them the tools to do it via the Facebook Application which allowed them buy the most recently played song on iTunes, enter competitions, request songs and so on. As the media agency, our job on top of giving a solution on ways to interact with their potential audience, was to drive relevant traffic to their solution. Without significant media spend behind these campaigns, they will fail. Luckily, the client invested a solid volume of media

To me, the reason why an advertiser like Fantastic Noodles failed is that they expected consumers to interact with their brand without giving them the tools to do so. They also believed that consumers would willingly 'pimp their kettle'. They were wrong.

Social media really is such an exciting phenomenon and I cannot wait to see what the next generation of clients do online.

While my first blog may lack quotations from trade press OR insanely exaggerated statics that normally come across as a numerical wank, I just thought I would get my opinion out there.
I'm not saying I can change the world - but hopefully someone agrees with me.

Until next time - say Hi to your mum for me (or something along those lines)