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

Good use of social media combined with traditional advertising

Foursquare – is now very relevant for restaurants and related places in all the major cities in the US.

Foursquare is a mobile app and web offering that is good at “building things that make cities easier to navigate and random Thursday nights more interesting”.

Amongst its many features, one of the leading tools is the concept of Mayorism. You can become a “Mayor” of a local deli, pub, shop, site, etc if you are an active visitor or loyal fan.  In order to win “Mayor” status, you need to gain points during a given week’s activity. The person with the most points becomes the Mayor for the week.  Points are given for normal things such as visits that week, intros to friends, tips to the audience, etc.  When you arrive at a joint, you “check in” and get loyalty points, last minute special offers, reviews and so on.

Ok.   All very social media, but what’s the point? How does this impact my business?

Simple. Give incentives to users to become a Mayor for your brand. “Free drinks” is always good.

Whilst before such an ad only got the eyeballs of the footfall, it now has the eyes of the footfall and all of their friends, networks, followers, Facebook groups, twitter lists and fellow foursquarers, with each class of friend having different access to your tastes, locations, etc. Mashable is a good example of the benefits of having multiple layers of social networking.

What to do?

Nothing fancy. Just start thinking about integrating social media calls to action throughout your traditional media communications. Don’t do it for the sake of doing it. Integrate it if it makes sense.

Declan

Update - Techcrunch view on above - 31Dec09. http://bit.ly/57Eyve