Digital advertising v social media engagement

Recently I yawned a bit too much when reading a well put together article called “Digital Dreams” in the Sunday Business Post.  In general, it attempted to summarise how the Digital Advertising Industry works and how brands should approach engaging with digital.

I was bored primarily because it espouses Google SEO, CPC and display advertising as the key tools of effective digital advertising. So. What’s my problem?

These blunt tools represent an antiquated push model of display and click-through advertising and are no way reflective of the emerging offerings in digital advertising, which are fundamentally based on two-way consumer engagement and interaction. 

Whilst it’s very sad to see the likes of advertising industry bellwethers McConnells (traditional) and i-level (digital)  sold / liquidated, the fates of these companies are merely indicators of the fundamental restructuring of the traditional and digital advertising industries.

Advertising has always been about influencing the one key person to spread the message to their friends. Consumers are influenced by their peers. The world of advertising communication has now flipped from one-way projection to two-way engagement.  Social media makes it easier for word of mouth recommendations to flow from peer to peer. Thus, the effectiveness of one-way advertising diminishes the greater the flow of social conversations.  

Social media provides us with mass market media channels to enable the spread of social (word of mouth) influence. The challenge for advertisers is in effectively connecting with the limited number of key influencers in social groups.

Personalisation and socialisation is now the norm and will continue to be for the foreseeable future. In fact, it has always been this way - recent technological offerings have just made it much easier for people to enagage (e.g. Facebook). Privacy debates will continue, but online social is not going anywhere. 

All online activities are set to come with the same level of personalisation you get in the local corner shop, by connecting and exposing a users’ social networks of friends and peers. Word of mouth, peer to peer recommendations has always been the primary influence for purchasing.  This significantly increases the value of social media, yet the core underlying challenges remain. How do I engage the key influencers? What is the output of my marketing activities in social media? Collectively, we need to find the answers.

With all of this is two-way interactivity between networks, brands need to connect with the connectors in these networks.  Whilst in the short term it may pay for a brand to spend on one-way digital advertising, in the medium term, the effectiveness of this form of digital advertising will diminish considerably compared to effective conversation management on social media.

Social media should be leading any form of digital strategy. Without social, digital is just a very blunt messaging tool.

Declan

social media communities – organic v paid

Over the past month we have had the pleasure of working on some large facebook campaigns involving rapid scale in conversations / fan growth. Some of this growth was paid for through traditional and social media marketing / advertising. In other cases, the growth was down to competitions and promotions to drive fan growth. (a user couldn’t enter the competition unless they became a fan of the fan page)

What I’m trying to figure out is what industry we are in. It seems to be a blend of media buying for social media with the new version of direct marketing using social media promotions. I was recently involved in a talk to some up and coming digital entrepreneurs in Dublin and this exact issue came up. My current personal view is that it is ok to blast buy your immediate fan base. Assume that 30% to 50% of these fans will fall away and plan your future conversations against the remaining group of people

What I’m struggling with is the value of this “purchased” community versus a traditional organically grown community. These are decent brands, with good messages. Maybe I’m just a purist (naive?). Either way I do realise that the real challenge lies in keeping this audience engaged once you get their attention in the first place. This requires a pretty honest view on your brand, who you are and where you are going. Thereafter it is all about decent creatives, solid metrics and some form of road map of where you want the conversation to be in 3 year’s time.

It’s clear to me that there is a new set of rules and metrics emerging on how to engage with consumers through the use of social media. At its most fundamental level it is all about having the channels in place to amplify positive word of mouth messages from your customers / influences. There is no better advertising medium than social media to maximise word of mouth.  Positive word of mouth comes from honesty and a thought through social strategy. 

Declan

The advertising battle for social news feed influence

Here’s a one page summary of Facebook and its opportunities for brands and agencies.

http://www.betapond.com/why-facebook-betapond-overview.pdf

Crafted in plain English by www.betapond.com.  Feb 2010

Facebook Connect and Bump (mobile) - building audience

Bump (electronic business card/file swapping) makes great use of your Facebook friends list to help you get more from your electronic card swap. By using Facebook Connect, it takes that initial business card introduction and leverages it by using Facebook to see who and what you have in common.

What does this mean?

If you meet somebody in person, Bump will tell you the friends or business contacts you have in common. Social acceptance, be it personal or business related, is very important. If you have mutual connections then the relationship moves up a level. This information is passed back, in real time, to your phone or Facebook account, which is good inside info for any relationship building, be it a sales pitch or a conversation with a stranger in a bar…

To be specific, some of the Facebook Connect integration that Bump includes is as follows:

• Notifications: receive a private Facebook notification when you bump someone not in your friends list.
• Compare: discover mutual Facebook friends when comparing friends
• Wall updates: update your wall with the contact you bumped

In this example, the Bump guys are using social networks to amplify normal physical connections / introductions. Facebook Connect gives you the tools to do this. All you need is a “window” into Facebook Connect, which in this case is your mobile phone. (See article from Mashable on the top 10 implications of Facebook Connect.)

We in Betapond are not consumer marketers or salespeople, yet the benefits to us are pretty clear.

In all forms of consumer business, social media connections and peer to peer recommendations are the new must-have advertising messages. Yet it is not rocket science.

Hats off to Bump. Clear, common-sense thinking in a world gone mad for complex technology.

Create Long Conversations NOT Short Term Statistics

Just a short note on proper use of solutions. When adopting new social media tools to engage with your audience it is important to realise that you should be creating an environment that fosters long term communication, as opposed to short term promotion.

You must engage with the audience in two way conversations. If you do not have the time to invest in these communications, then you are probably better off not starting in the first place. You must commit to investing the necessary resources to truly exploit these channels. You can effectively promote events, products etc., but only as part of a broader ongoing conversation between all those that choose to participate.

That’s the important point – people “choose” to engage. You are not pushing information to them and they are not pulling information from you. Everyone is engaged in a social interaction that everybody benefits from in their own way. At a most fundamental level it fulfils our need to belong and communicate with others.

Here’s an interseting article on the subject.

Conor