Content as social currency
People are talking about your brand whether you like it or not. In many cases they are taking your digital assets and using them in ways that you did not originally intend. Some marketers approach such activity with aggression. However, savvy marketers know if they proactively create a presence in a variety of social environments and consistently seed the community with interesting content, it is more likely that their voice will be heard and respected.
For example, some of the presidential candidates have leveraged the social web to influence voters and fill their war chests by tapping into a huge population of small donors previously absent from the process. As I write this article, Barack Obama has compiled a donor list of more than 1.3 million contributors. His campaign's use of social marketing has been so effective, that he has perhaps perpetually changed the future of campaign financing -- rather than it largely being driven largely by fat cats and super-donor bundlers, more than 90 percent of his contributors gave less than $100. This has, in part been due to Obama's ability to leverage content as social currency on his Ning platform, my.barackobama.com.
Consider Douglas Rushkoff's explanation of social currency: "Social currency is like a good joke. When a bunch of friends sit around and tell jokes, what are they really doing? Entertaining one another? Sure, for a start. But they are also using content -- mostly unoriginal content that they've heard elsewhere -- in order to lubricate a social occasion. And what are most of us doing when we listen to a joke? Trying to memorize it so that we can bring it somewhere else. The joke itself is social currency. 'Invite Harry. He tells good jokes. He's the life of the party.'"
While our current candidates may not have been telling jokes, the content they've provided has allowed them entrance into various communities, drawing new constituents into the conversation. It's somewhat ironic that some brands have not more readily adopted the notion of content as social currency, as it is as old as mass media itself (consider the soap opera where a brand's ability to sponsor content was its ticket into our homes).
While some brands are learning to let go, as an industry we still have some progress to make. Here is a brief checklist of things to be considered when deciding how to best maximize the impact of your content:
1. Create a Flickr account and upload and tag all of your product/brand photos (see Ford Motor Company example below).
- An RSS photostream (see image below) is created and can be brought into various environments.
- As an added benefit, search engines love RSS feeds
2. Create accounts/channels on various video sharing sites (Vimeo, YouTube, DailyMotion, etc.) to house all of your video content (including television commercials -- someone is bound to rip the commercial and post it; you may as well be the first. If timed properly, search engines will recognize your content as the original).
- Below is an example of a brand putting its television commercial (Armani Beauty/Beyonce Diamonds) on YouTube before anyone had a chance to do it. This ensured that the brand's version is the one best positioned in search results.
- Try a tool like TubeMogul to easily upload content and track activity across all video-sharing sites.
3. Use Facebook fan pages for those would-be brand advocates.
4. If you have compelling audio/video content, syndicate it to iTunes. This allows consumers to easily put your brand on their iPods and take the content to go or watch/listen from their PC.
5. Try creating a stand-alone social network (e.g., on Ning).
- Experimental rock band Radiohead recently tested the Ning platform with an initiative called w.a.s.t.e central. The effort was meet with some criticism, but it is obvious that the band truly understands the fundamental changes that are taking place in our media ecosystem.
