Ideas and intelligence: the currency of social media
Tim McKane, Director of Navajo Talk, explains how understanding and using social media channels well can deliver real results.
Ideas and intelligence: the currency of social media
Twitter was busy during the Superbowl. Very busy. Almost maxed out in fact. 10,000 tweets were flying around cyber space every second during the last three minutes.
For those that didn’t follow it, the New York Giants won in the last minute with a touchdown to beat the New England Patriots. Throughout the game hash tags were bouncing around as much as the line backers, as people joined the nationwide conversation about all things Superbowl.
Meanwhile the marketing community was playing their own game. Competing for attention through traditional media, a 30 second TV spot would only have put you back $3,500,000, but more and more with social media channels. And the general consensus is that not that many got the synergy between their television advertising and the social media right.
Here is what E-Consultancy (the online web site for digital marketers) said...
The real point here is not whether or not the TV spots drove people online –it’s about what value proposition did or didn’t await them there. Most of the TV ads that featured any online call to action at all simply encouraged people to go to the corporate website, but what would be in it for the viewers if they did? There’s been plenty of debate over who had the best or worst ad, but the point is why go out and splash $3.5 million on your 30 second spot without using social media to amplify its effect?
But take some comfort here. Northern Ireland companies do not have $3,500,000 to spend on one broadcast of a television commercial. In fact very few have a tenth of that amount for a whole year of marketing. But with the arrival of social media the playing field has levelled out again, and the currency is not dollars, but ideas.
Good ideas on social media do not rely on dollars. Intelligent development of strategic plans and understanding of how to use the channels well can deliver real results. However, the same thinking applies. We are seeing Facebook logos all over advertising. Posters and TV ads carry the logo, or a QR code, or a hash tag.
But is there a value proposition when you follow a link? Is the competition, information, content or imagery relevant to the campaign, or more importantly, the person at the other side of the screen?
The growth in social media has been explosive, but there are those that get it, and those that don’t. It is a competition for engagement. Simply putting up a Facebook page, setting up a Twitter account, or joining Linkedin will not cut it. You are competing for attention, in the same way that the ad with the best idea in the break will generate most recall, the content on the social media channels that is most engaging will make the most impact.
So in a sense we are back to square one. Good marketing communications is driven by ideas that differentiate, and if you want your company to stand out, you need to be creative. Deciding to use the social media channels is not the end, it is simply the beginning.
Tim McKane is Director of Navajo Talk and can be contacted at navajotalk.com
Tim can also be contacted via Twitter - @TimMcKane