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Understanding the Rules of Engagement and Developing the Right Strategic Approach

If your brand has a Facebook page, chances are you’ve executed or thought about executing a social promotion (contest, sweepstakes, etc.).  Perhaps you are trying to engage your target audience to get feedback from current fans on existing products, promote new products, generate media attention, or drive sales.

The variety of ways brands can execute promotions on Facebook to achieve marketing success are endless, and the most innovative brands are having a lot of fun finding new ways to skin this cat. Before we dive into tactics, we need to talk strategy. Brands that have piqued fan interest through Facebook promotions have typically done so by developing a sound strategy tied to clearly defined goals.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll describe each approach in more detail including case studies, but here is a roadmap of where we are heading:

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This past November, Jawbone – known best for stylish Bluetooth headsets – announced the UP wristband. The UP is a smart device that tracks the wearer’s motion, sleep, and diet patterns, empowering its owner with personal analytics that can help reshape fitness and diet habits. The press welcomed UP’s potential with high praise and anticipation.

Roughly five weeks later, UP is down.  Pre-launch praise has been replaced by well-founded disappointment by UP’s early adopters, The New York Times’ David Pogue being one of them. Some owners are experiencing a handful of technical issues with their device – stories that are destroying UP’s future sales potential. Truth be told, things didn’t look good earlier this week.

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A little while ago, our estimable COO tweeted a link to Socialcast’s fun infographic on the harried 24-hour work cycle of the average social media manager.  It was entertaining (not to mention frighteningly accurate) and we all got a good chuckle.

What it also unwittingly illustrated, however, is why content strategy is becoming so important to the success of digital marketing.  Social media managers (and their web counterparts, site managers) are supposed to constantly be pushing out great content to build brand awareness, image, et. al., and build customer engagement. But with so much to stay on top of, do they have time to be strategic about that content? How well are they able to plan, create, curate, and manage well-thought-out material that tells your story effectively, captivates your audience, aligns to your marketing strategy, and helps you achieve results?

Very often, the answer is “not nearly well enough”. (That is, when it’s not hysterical laughter followed by “me and what army?”)

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Google’s recently released brand pages were a most anticipated event for many of the leading brands engaged in social media activities. Now that they’re here, does it matter? Not surprisingly, there are advocates and naysayers, some early adopters and others wondering what exactly to do.

Rush In to G+?

Launching a new social property should be done within the confines of an overall social strategy, so brands considering a G+ page is a “must do” should think before they act. First, see if having a G+ page aligns with strategic imperatives, such as connecting with early social adopters, since G+ is still pretty much only used by savvy social actors. For many brands, it might just make sense to grab their page for now, like paying for a list of domain names for a new micro site, to ensure the brand “owns” the space in the event plans make it worthwhile optimizing in the future. Ideally this asset would be placed within the brand’s ecosystem, connected to the strategy, but differentiated and used as its own asset. Currently, we’re seeing that very few brands are doing this. Most are simply replicated efforts on Facebook.

But even in simple ways, some brands are differentiating. Among some of the first to adventure into G+, Ford took an interesting approach, creating a simple, yet focused stab at engagement that is not a mirror image of its’ Facebook page by filling it with rich media posts. This type of content does well on G+ as the Posts are the primary engagement method. Ford isn’t’ the only company with a differentiating approach. Pepsi’s page is focused around the enjoyment of the brand in connection to music, and Rovio’s Angry Birds page is encouraging followers to vote on their favorite plush character. No matter the approach, don’t forget whom and how many of the current users of G+ are active users. Brands should ask themselves, “Is your consumer one of them right now? Are they likely to be G+ users within the next six months or a year? Why?”

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A smart post on NPR last week discussed the “Casually Pepper Spraying Meme” that has exploded online over the last few days. Regardless of the larger social issues at work here, the speed at which this particular meme has spread holds a few interesting lessons for marketers.

As the article points out, rapid iteration and expansion of the meme has pushed it to many different audiences on multiple social channels such as Facebook and Tumblr. The initial mash-up of the campus police officer and his spray can into classic works of art has spread to far more trivial and somewhat more humorous (or not) images. The initial larger political message may be lost, but the meme now carries its own symbolism and meaning.

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