Bob Wheatley

Remember Bill Clinton’s distillation of his Presidential campaign bid to one singular message platform: It’s the economy, stupid. Similarly the onion surrounding social media success for brands and business can be peeled back to reveal one central and over-arching truth – it’s the content that drives the attraction value, fan-base growth and conversation.

Never before in the history of brand marketing and PR have we been in such a position to build credible relationships, real ones, with those we wish to communicate with.

Image c/o Getty Images

Throwing messaging baseballs

Yet so many in the communications business these days seem hell-bent on continuing to push self-serving messaging AT people in every media pathway. Why? Because we’re so used to sitting down and defining what we want to “convince” audiences of about our brand. We labor greatly to define key messages and then look at every vehicle out there as a vessel for delivering the message payload, be it paid, earned or owned media. We throw messaging baseballs at people expecting them to step up and catch them.

Oops they dropped the ball

But more often than not, consumers drop the ball, walk away from home plate and simply ignore the spinning missive at it passes by. They don’t want to play the game that way. Social media is by its very definition an “accrual” proposition. Your Facebook page or Twitter account begins with an audience of zero. Unlike every medium that’s come before it where access to a given media property brought you a specific audience size and type. In the new world of owned media, you start at the beginning. With nothing.

Building the fan base

Aggregating an audience is an outcome of great content, conversation and meaningful offers. The authenticity and value of that content is related directly to its relevance to the consumer’s lifestyle interests. Thus brands must find a path to “hook-up” with consumers based on what THEY care about, not the other way around.

1. For the food brand it might be enabling a recipe sharing community or bringing consumers into contact with their kitchen heroes like chefs.

2. For a beverage brand it could be enabling unique social experiences and providing ways for fans to share their impressions and ideas with each other.

3. For a fashion brand it might involve helping fashion-forward people to share their ideas and insights on what to wear for different occasions, from beach to ballroom.

Eyes wide open

This whole process gets a lot clearer when brands employ consumer insight research to better understand the lifestyle interests and needs of their core consumers. Then ask themselves: what can the brand do to facilitate, enable or create opportunities to experience and share those things?

Building better brand relationships

Content that’s meaningful, valuable, interesting and entertaining is the path to establishing a community of engaged fans. Here are a few practical hints for doing it right.

• Multi-media is the way to go. Facebook’s share functionality only works when multi-media contact is used – podcasts and videos for instance.

• Ask questions. Interactivity occurs when we purposefully invite our community into the conversation, seeking their views, ideas and opinions.

• Use emotional terms and words. We are not fact-based, analytical decision making machines. We are expectation creation machines and thus frame our brand relationships based on feelings more than facts. Are you using emotive words?

• Responsiveness. The “get back to me” bar is considerably higher in the digital era. Consumers want and expect quick responses to their questions. Speed matters and being responsive is part of the assessment of how well your brand performs in the social media space.

• Conversation. Like-minded individuals congregate together in specific communities because of their shared interests. Are you helping enable their ability to talk with one another?

• Surprise and delight. Reward your fans with special offers and values they won’t get elsewhere. Recognize your most faithful followers with special status and access to unique content or other VIP experiences.

Social media is working well when its done right. Enough so that some sizable brands are upping their social media investments. Kellogg just announced they’re tripling their social media budget in the year ahead.

What do you think?