6 Social Media Rules For Creating Brand Evangelists

6 Social Media Rules For Creating Brand Evangelists

Here are six new rules of engagement, based upon an analysis of brand successes, behavioral psychology, and trends in consumer marketing and the social context……. 

1. You See Numbers, People See Themselves

Marketers who are trained in the nuances of insightful segmentation and consumer nuances seem to forget all that when marketing through social media. They blast one message to hundreds of thousands of people.  Even millions.  But creating a brand evangelist starts with a personal connection, and personal connections can’t be built with impersonal messaging.  Acquiring giant quantities of friends makes this more difficult, but the growth of Big Data and customer intelligence solutions makes it possible.

2. When People Share Values, They’ll Share A Lot More

Brands today are complex, impressionistic constructions of product, performance, perceptions, and belief systems. More and more, brands are taking stands on social and even political issues; companies like Whole Foods  and The Container Store, for example, are active members of the Conscious Capitalism movement.

Brands can also share values through the choices they make in how they communicate. Style is substantive. Zappos is widely regarded as brilliantly adept at creating wildly devotional brand partisans, and the Twitter feed of its CEO, Tony Hsieh, is a large part of that.

Here’s a perfect example of that; a Tweet he made last July. No sell, no offer, in fact, an anti-consumption message: Want happiness? Don’t buy more stuff—go on vacation!

It was preceded by a Tweet about research on getting kids to consume more vegetables, and a quote from Ann Frank.  This random glimpse into the mind of a CEO displays an emotional transparency that builds loyalty. You know that it wasn’t rubber-stamped by a Twitter Approval Sub-Committee.

So social media is the ultimate platform for communicating your values and energizing people around them. Of course, you can’t satisfy everyone, but the process of creating brand acolytes means that you cannot be equally meaningful to everyone. Deal with it.

3. Lameness Can’t Create Loyalty

Have you noticed how much social media is represented by Tweets and posts like this triteness display from McDonald’s:

Morning! How’s everyone’s week going so far?

24 Jan Favorite Retweet Reply

Would you want to be friends, and hang out with someone who always feels obligated to spout something, even when they have absolutely nothing of interest on their minds? So if you want to create evangelists, start with being excruciatingly demanding about every single thing you say. And how you say it.

4. Real Friends Don’t Impose—Unless There’s a Good Reason

Offline relationships are the psychological model for brand “friendships.” Well, before you ask a friend for a favor, you think through the implications. How important is it to you? How difficult or emotionally fraught might it be your friend to act on your request? When does the request over-stretch the implicit boundaries of the relationship?

Brands need to go through the same social calculus, but they seldom do. So a brand will ask you to forward something to a friend, or invite a friend to join a group, without really thinking through the implications.  They are pushing hard, if not violating, the natural limits of the “friendship”—and then they are surprised when they don’t get the results they expected.

To create evangelists who are ready, willing and able to use their social graphs to advance your brand, you need to develop some rules of reciprocity, and real customer intelligence about which of your current fans and friends are most likely to share. For example, those who have large networks, and high Klout scores, might be better evangelist than those who keep to themselves. But are you treating them all the same?

5. Surprise Everyone, Including Yourself

We become emotionally attached to those who bring unexpected twists and surprises to our lives. That’s because disruptive surprise and intrigue release dopamine, which creates pleasure (and its evil cousin, addiction.) Insufficient novelty creates dopamine boredom.   

Surprise can be the way you say something (style) or what you give them as far as rewards or incentives go (content). It’s a rich area for innovation.

Trouble is, many big brands see surprise as a risk, because it requires unexpected behaviors, which by definition, haven’t been done before and might be considered “off-brand.” Dopamine boredom is always safe. Hence the paradox of evangelists: to create them, you need to push on the limits of institutional norms. But if you do so, and surprise them and yourself in the process, you might actually find your dopamine will be flowing as much as theirs.  

6. Go Out Of Your Way For People, and They’ll Go Out of Their Way for You

One of the most powerful ways to create evangelists is to behave with breathtaking responsiveness. Many are halfway there. Increasingly, more and more companies are turning to social media to address customer service issues. So we’re seeing tons of responses like this from Target:

@XTEDDIX That’s frustrating! Thanks for letting us know. We’ll be passing your comments along to our Store Leadership team. Matthew

But what we’re not seeing are a lot of results. The average friend or fan is exposed to a torrent of problems, not solutions. So in the interests of being a responsive organization, brands can come across as customer-service train wrecks.

Wouldn’t it be cool if a brand posted, each day, the resolution of its most triumphant, confounding, and amusing customer services issues. 

via Fast Company

Mini Matmian►

Cultivating a Social Media community who engage with a brand takes time, research and constant monitoring…alot each. It can be a daunting task to begin on this long road. These 6 points are a good place to start.

Each brands needs are unique in some way and it is important not to lose sight of this fact. Tailor your SM campaign to the needs of the brand with the needs of the customers you want to engage at the forefront of everything you do.

Be bold, be relevant, don’t be afraid to try things out and most importantly…be real. No one likes to feel they are talking to a automated robotic response. [end transmission]

Have you any tips to share with someone starting out their social media planning journey? 

Disney’s Second Screen technology a treat for movie lovers

Image via http://www.siliconrepublic.com

“…as movie technology itself has advanced so too have the additional features, becoming slicker, more refined, and in the case of Disney’s Second Screen feature, extremely interactive.

Launched last year with the Blu-ray release of Bambi, the folks at Disney devised a way for you to watch a movie while simultaneously getting a peek behind the curtain on your laptop, PC or iPad via an app that’s available a day before the film’s Blu-ray release date.”

“…From storyboards to something called “seamless branching” - a visual tangent that essentially pauses the movie while the director expands on a certain scene and then reverts back to where the movie was - Second Screen represents several hours worth of potential playing, clicking, flicking and watching.”

[via Cineplex By Andrea Miller] 

Mini Matmian►

We have only skimmed the surface of Second Screen possibilities. There are many exciting prospects in the future for this technology and we at Matmi are exploring them all.

Research has shown that over 60 percent of viewers have an internet capable device within reach. This means there are already huge portions of viewers who could be given the chance to have a much richer experience than passively watching the ‘talking pictures’ (not that, from time to time, I don’t like sitting back and just relaxing while watching my favourite show/film).

From TV to film to product placement to advertising to education, second screen technology has almost endless possibilities. It can change the way we consume media. It could revolutionise the manner we interact with the box we have been staring at for decades (strong words I know, but I’m as excited as kid on Christmas day just thinking about it).

We can even become part of the narrative we are watching; interacting and engaging in a way never before thought possible. Combine this with IPTV and, well…it’s the future :)

Our MD Jeff Coghlan put forward just one possible use for Second Screen technologies at a recent MoMoMcr event.

“Imagine this. You could be watching a clothing show, a signal is sent to your mobile device via sound waves (audio watermarking) which triggers an event. The peice of clothing being discussed on the TV all of a sudden appears on your mobile. You can then apply it to a virtual manikin of yourself to see how it might look and then share this with friends, asking their opinions or to vote on it. You could have the option to click a link which would use GPS to locate your position and show you where you might be able to buy the item.”

That is a mere snippet of what could be done.

I could go on, I could delve into the subject in greater detail. Laying out Matmi’s thoughts for the future of digital media. But then we don’t want to give away all of secrets. However, I promise you, this will not the last we speak on the subject of Second Screen technologies.

What are your thoughts? Does the encroaching tide of second screen technologies entering your viewing experience trouble you? Maybe you already take advantage of it (GetGlu for example - a VERY simple form but an example none the less)?

[Read the full article here: http://bit.ly/AfXOGG]

Realted post: 

• Half of consumers user a second screen while watching TV
• The shift from watching TV to experiencing TV

If your company is looking for a digital agency to provide you with a unique, inspiring and engaging form of branded entertainment, then look no further than Matmi…. 

 

http://www.matmi.com/contact.php

info@matmi.com

Phone: (+44)01625 560771

Twitter: @matmi

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/Matmi

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Here’s What People Look at on Facebook Brand Pages

In an effort to catch your eye on their Facebook pages, brands have experimented with apps and splashy profile photos. But in almost all cases, it turns out, the humble Facebook wall itself steals the show.

In an webcam eye-tracking study for Mashable byEyeTrackShop, the 30 participants who viewed top Facebook brand pages almost always looked at pages’ walls first — usually for at least four times longer than any other element on the page.

SEE ALSO: Here’s How People Look at Your Facebook Profile — Literally

On average, the smaller pictures above the wall were noticed 85% of the time, and the “likes” column was noticed just 58% of the time.

View the rest of the results on Mashable HERE.

The Return of Real-Time Social Environments

Via Scoop.it - New Digital Media

The last few months have seen an explosive resurgence in real-time environments, last popular in the late ’90s. The interesting thing is that this new zeitgeist seems to have taken root in multiple places within the space of a few short weeks.   I’ve seen this all before: I was one of the founders of an avatar chat company called The Palace, Inc. back in 1995. Although quite popular (10 million users at its peak in 1998), The Palace never found a revenue stream that worked. As Jake Winebaum once told me, Palace was a phenomenon, not a business. He was right. But that was then, and this is now.

The New Real-Time Landscape

Let’s examine a few examples. Avatar-based chat room Shaker took the gold two weeks ago at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference. Created as a Facebook app, Shaker lets users enter an isometric environment that resembles a bar. You can see and interact with other fully articulated avatars that look like mannequins. Users can chat, dance, give other users virtual drinks, see which of your Facebook friends are nearby and invite them to join the party. There is no “point” to Shaker interaction; it’s simply fun and engaging.

Show original (Mashable)