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User-driven media is particularly valuable to advertisers because community members care a great deal about the content they create. They participate in these communities to find or provide specific information that is highly valuable to them and their peers. Therefore, professional and business-oriented sites are teeming with super-engaged users who are telling advertisers what is important to them right now. The content they create is dynamic and highly granular, which presents business marketers with myriad of hyper-targeting opportunities, and better targeting improves ad performance.
But how can you determine if a social media site will deliver this kind of performance? Here are four questions a business marketer should ask a site operator:
- What proportion of the site's content is community generated versus content generated by the site operator or third parties?
It's easy to get confused about what constitutes user-generated content. For instance, editorial content, such as a blog or article written by a full-time or freelance journalist, is not user-generated content. Even comments from readers to an editorially produced blog or article do not result in highly granular content on a wide range of topics, which are the key ingredients for hyper-targeting. In its purest sense, it does include original content that community members develop from scratch based on their own interests. They alone are choosing what to talk about and are conducting those conversations from start to finish through various publishing tools, such as blogs, groups, wikis, social networking profiles and messaging.
A community that dictates site content becomes an "active" versus "passive" audience that provides a much clearer indication of what is of interest to them, and as a result provides advertisers with the ability to hyper target prospects. In general, sites driven by user-generated content produce significantly more material than an editorial staff is able to produce, and the more user-generated content, the more opportunities for advertisers to connect with consumers in a meaningful, targeted way.
- Does the community create quality content and how is that quality guaranteed?
If the site is professional and fact-finding in nature, then high-quality, user-generated content will abound. Inquire about the site's policies. At ITtoolbox, for example, we moderate all content according to a clearly articulated, publicly posted policy that outlines what is considered unacceptable behavior within the community. With professional communities, the accepted standard of behavior is understood and championed by members. They know that the moderation process is there to help them receive the most value and improve their experience.
- Will my existing online campaigns work on a social media site?
On most social media sites, you will be able to run the same campaigns using the same creatives you run on editorial-based sites, and you will receive the same or even higher performance. As discussed in a previous article, standard advertising options on social media sites offer opportunities to tap into the hyper-targeted, super-engaged users of online communities. Ask social media site operators if they have the ability to contextually target ads based on the conversations taking place.
For example, by targeting IMUs both contextually and by topic area, ITtoolbox has been able to increase click-through rates by more than 50 percent over IMUs targeted only by topic area. These high-performing IMUs demonstrate the power of matching advertising content with granular community-generated content.
Social media sites may also offer opportunities to extend beyond standard online advertising campaigns, and these may require the use of new ad creatives. Blogcast sponsorships, wiki sponsorships, and a host of other out-of-the-box opportunities, may help you reach your target audiences; so ask the site operator what capabilities they provide.
- What technologies or services does the site offer to help marketers target specific demographics or sub-groups?
It's important to know if and how an operator can help you connect with consumers at a highly granular level. Ask about demographic targeting capabilities. For users to participate meaningfully in a community and find like-minded members, they usually must create a personal profile. This can provide a wealth of demographic information that can be maximized by advertisers.
Dan Morrison is co-founder and CEO of ITtoolbox, an online community where professionals share knowledge about information technology. Read full bio.
