Social Media Infatuation. The problem with viral campaigns
“An audience that participates is an audience that connects to a brand’s underlying message.” ~QC
Social media advertising budgets continue to increase each year, but some marketers are beginning to forget about the benefits of an actionable social media strategy (Ashley, 2014).
I want to talk about the obsession with viral campaigns and their negative affect on a long term marketing strategy. And then I'll try to tell you how to combat the infatuation.
At TINT, we call it Social Media Infatuation; an extremely quick obsession with a brand followed by an extremely quick consumer/brand break-up. This results in hills and valleys of engagement with consumers never fully understanding the message they are told.
Viral campaigns effectively get a brand’s name out in the open, but it can be detrimental when it fails to market the story the brand cares about. Some marketers believe that once you have the fans, then you can adjust the message, but when your message is being shared by millions of people, controlling it can be even more difficult than when your fans are in the 1000s.
A long-term strategy to cure Social Media Infatuation
A solid social media strategy doesn’t just rely on earned media or owned media. There needs to be a balance between a brand pushing content and a brand incentivizing their audience to create brand specific content. Proctor and Gamble did this flawlessly with their “Thank You Mom” campaign (Ashley, 2014).
The brand asked their consumers to share pieces of User Generated Content on social media about their mothers’ role in their athletic endeavors. P&G’s marketing team then captured this UGC and requested the rights to use certain pieces. From that UGC, the brand created commercials and other marketing collateral using their audience’s targeted, relevant, and relatable content (Ashley, 2014).
“We see how strong moms are in every facet of their lives, and how their children draw on that strength as they grow. Through our campaign, we invite everyone to join us in saying, “Thank you” to mums for the role they play in raising strong children.” Marc Pritchard, P&G Global Brand Officer
Success with a content marketing strategy and social media strategy lies in the engagement type of your audience.
There are two main types within social media: passive engagement and psychological engagement. Passive engagement might be a Like on your Facebook page without any engagement, whereas psychological engagement focuses on the fact that a customer will have you on their mind at multiple touch points and will be willing to share their thoughts on the brand in the future.
“Psychological engagement is important because consumers are not passive recipients of information; they are participants.” ~Christy Ashley, Marketing and Psychology expert
As Christy Ashley states in Creative Strategies in Social Media Marketing, “Psychological engagement is important because consumers are not passive recipients of information; they are participants” (Ashley, 2014). An audience that participates is an audience that connects to a brand’s underlying message. Fail to live up to the brand image you market and your audience will lose interest.
Your marketing strategy and brand image suffers when:
- The conversation only goes on way (i.e. A brand asks for recognition – “use our hashtag” - from consumers, but doesn’t reciprocate an interest in their audience
- The brand fails to live up to the image they’ve created.
- The brand strays from the image that appeals to the identities of their audience.
The reason that brands should focus on their customers as the characters in their brand story is due to the Self-Expansion Theory.
Self-expansion theory suggests consumers communicate with and about brands due to overlapping identities and parasocial relationships with the brands. Brands can suffer if consumers feel the relationship is one-sided or the brand does something that is not consistent with the consumer’s identity (Huang & Mitchell, 2014)
Easy steps to start a long-term marketing strategy
There are so many mediums with which to interact with a brand audience, that many times marketers do not know how or when to judge the effectiveness of branded content or social media marketing. A study of 1100 brands showed that marketers were guessing on their strategies, with no backing from data, and few results to show (Sheehan, 2009).
At TINT we’ve created 3 easy steps to consider to increase accuracy with your strategy:
1 - Create a 2 way street of communication.
If you ask a customer to interact with you, interact back. Don’t expect a customer to understand your brand if you aren’t willing to understand why your customers are talking about you. The engagement should focus on interactions rather than transactions, as this will allow the audience to identify with the brand image (Ashley, 2014).
2 - Make the customers the characters in your brand story.
As a marketer, you get to create the overall brand image, but your customers are the ones that reinforce it. You can learn from your customers as they create UGC to understand where they might be moving away from the brand image. At this point, you can find ways to adjust the customer’s perspective, or adjust the slowly brand image to fit with the customers.
3 - Consistency of your brand image is key
A brand doesn’t need to create a Hollywood style video before they can post it online. Keep the content accurate and relevant to your brand image. The more you change your image, the more alienated and confused your audience becomes. You should be posting the same amount every day on each channel, and each piece of content should relate to the brand story. Quality over Quantity doesn’t really work here. It’s more Consistency over Quantity or Quality.
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You don't have to be an expert to craft a good strategy. But it takes more than an idea to find long term success. Get out there, start testing different ideas but keep it all consistent with your brand story. YOU CAN DO IT!
Let me know if I can help.
Linkedin profile: www.dhirubhai.net/in/quinncox