Screw Social Media Passivity

Courtesy of Flickr - notsogoodphotography

I see a pretty scary trend that’s going on in social media right now. As we’ve discussed in the past, in order to engage customers and stakeholders in the social environment, our company needs to either have a social personality or create a personality for our brands. This is true however what are the duties of personalities and brands? Seth Godin discusses the launch of “Brands in Public” for his company Squidoo in which he says:

You can’t control what people are saying about you. What you can do is organize that speech. You can organize it by highlighting the good stuff and rationally responding to the not-so-good stuff. You can organize it by embracing the people who love your brand and challenging them to speak up and share the good word. And you can respond to it in a thoughtful way, leaving a trail that stands up over time.

Looking at this small paragraph, this is what we, as social personalities, are expected to do; calm the negatives and thank the positives. This is the scary trend that I’m seeing… By simply doing the above, we are seeing brands keep the “status quo” of no emotion. Calming and thanking allows us to communicate with no emotion with our followers and friends that allow us to keep everyone at bay, ensuring we are still in “control” of our brand.

With this disturbing trend of emotionless communication, we are seeing more and more passivity in the communications between brands and consumers… simply trying to not piss anyone off and cause a negative viral storm. We are afraid of what could happen negatively, more than what’s positively possible in the social world. So afraid, we sit on the fence and play it safe by calming and thanking. I say, screw that. To really make a splash in the social world we need to have BIG personalities. Look at the top “social minds”… @scobleizer, @guykawasaki… two regular guys, BIG social personalities… and it has paid off for them. Sure they’ve pissed people off and have had negative comments about them, but they’ve made it through and have developed even stronger bonds with their true supporters, followers, friends, and customers.

When entering social media, I challenge you to go big… Have that big personality. Have emotion. Be active. Go to the extreme.

For negative comments, remember some famous lyrics from 311: “F*%& the naysayers cause they don’t mean a thing.”

For positive comments treat them like Rock Stars. Put them on a pedestal and go above and beyond to praise them and get to know them on a personal level.

What are your thoughts?

Avert Demonization - Integrate into the Consumer Lifestyle

I loved one of Seth Godin’s posts yesterday so much that I am putting it in it’s entirety here.

Demonization

The closer you get to someone, something, some brand, some organization… the harder it is to demonize it, objectify it or hate it.

So, if you want to not be hated, open up. Let people in. Engage. Interact.

This simple post illustrates the necessity of integrating your brand into the lifestyle of the consumer. As we saw in The Orbea Chronicles, it’s really quite simple to take a consumer from a customer to a brand advocate. What are you doing right now with your brand to ensure this transition?

Are Brands Becoming Badges On Social Media?

Brand Discrimination is the new Racial Discrimination!

Seth Godin’s, Tribes

In yesterday’s interview with Wired, Seth Godin’s new book Tribes was described as arguing “lasting and substantive change can be best effected by a group of people connected to each other, to a leader and to an idea.”

He then went on to discuss the use of social media by saying, “the one that I think is really available to a large number of people now without a lot of resources, is this idea of finding and connecting like-minded people and leading them to a place they want to go.”

Badges? We don’t need no stinking badges!

My question becomes what if brands became the “leaders?” If a brand could integrate its message so deeply into the lifestyle of the consumer and create a passionate, emotional attachment, that consumer would become an evangelist for that brand. They could proudly display their love and passion for that brand publicly. The use of certain social networking sites would allow just that. So, in a sense, that brand becomes a Badge that individual uses to define who they are. As this idea proliferates through different brands, these multiple Badges will become a way to characterize and identify a particular individual.

So, in theory, in the future, I could be viewed as “Adidas-Jaguar-Apple-Miller-Home Depot-Quiksilver” person which could then be used to define me as an individual; each badge, describing a little more about me as a person. Does that offend you? Are you a “Nike-Mercedes-PC-Budweiser-Lowe’s-Hurley?”

What do you think?

Could stereotypes be created from this theory? Will “brand discrimination” become the new “racial discrimination?” What are your thoughts?

Part 2 - How to Build a Brand: Messaging

After yesterday’s post, we now have a few, highly targeted and highly defined segments of the population. These segments are individuals that we defined as our “best customers.” We also began looking for them in our environment. Where they are? What they’re saying? How are they getting information? Etc. Now what? We need to create a communication foundation to begin a dialog with these segments.

As, I’ve mentioned in previous posts, in order to become successful in today’s communications environment, a brand needs to become malleable for the individual consumer as it pertains to their personal needs and lifestyle. This malleability will come from multiple individual conversations throughout the relationship of customers and prospects. But first, we need to get the conversation started with these individuals. We need to craft a message that will appeal to them to a point where they raise their hand and engage us in a dialog. This is done in two steps.

Core Brand Message

In the past, this was the one message that marketers would “push” to everyone and hope for a small percentage of engagement. With the saturation in the marketplace and the decline of advertising effectiveness; those days are long gone. The core brand message is basically what your company stands for; it’s your mission. For example, the core brand message for Volvo is safety. Through all conversations to customers and prospects the “safety” message is communicated. This message will basically be the backbone for the individual conversations. Next, we need manipulate the core brand message to appeal to the segmented individuals identified in Part 1.

Segment Stories

As Seth Godin always preaches, people don’t buy products, they buy stories. Basically, we would need to take our core brand message and tell a story of how our brand would fit into the lifestyle of the specific segment we are targeting. As we identified in Part 1: Segmentation, we should have a few different target segments; so we should have a different story that talks to each segment individually. By molding our message to appeal to these segmented individuals, we will have a higher chance in engagement once we begin drawing awareness to our brand, Part 3. The more targeted the segment, the more relevant the segment story needs to be.

What’s Next

In Part 1, we identified who to talk to and where to talk to them. Here in Part 2 we have developed the messaging to attract segment individuals. Next in Part 3, we will go discuss how to use a mix of traditional, social, and content marketing to build awareness.

Your Thoughts

What do you think? Is the messaging you’re marketing a mass message or is it tailored to very targeted, very defined segments?