2011 is going to be a big year for social communications, says Jon Holloway.
After a sketchy 2010, most companies have now adopted some form of social strategy. However great this may sound I believe most social campaigns this year will fail. Why? Mainly due to the way social has been sold, taught and learned over the past few years.
Most intelligent people can now see the benefits of social media and are on the journey with brand spanking new Twitter, YouTube and Facebook accounts set up. If you are one of these people and are now looking around the room wondering what next, you need to get on the content bus and start being unique.
Reboot your social campaigns for 2011
Many people have taken their first step on to the social ladder at platform level, which is a strange way to enter a world that is about relationships. Setting up a stall in Glasgow selling tickets to a London venue wouldn’t work, so why set up a Twitter account if your audience is not there?
Top tips to reboot in 2011
- Bring it inhouse. Don’t allow your agency to manage your community, bring it in-house. You will get a completely different view of your social campaigns.
- Forget the platforms. Look at your business, your thinking and refocus on creating compelling, entertaining and interactive content.
- Get integrated. No channel works in isolation, your customers do not see channels, they just see life, and life is made of many touch points. Social, website, mobile, email and the list goes on.
What is content?
There have been three distinct changes in the content arena, we started with print, moved to multimedia and now we have personal interaction. The real power is in understanding who should create it and the types of content that you should be producing to keep your audience hooked in to your brand.
Who creates it?
You create: All the content that is created internally. It could be written by your team, the marketers, PR, thought leaders, bloggers and anyone else who puts a finger to the keyboard.
Co-create: All the content that is created alongside your customers or audience. Co-creation is going to be a big thing this year – from events, to thought leadership pieces; this should be on your agenda.
They create: All the content that is created by your customers and audience. The social world has allowed everyone to be a content creator; it is time to be the content curator of your industry.
Which content bucket does it sit in?
Branded content: Content that is created to position your brand in the mind of the customer. Always think entertaining and make it sharable in every medium.
Educational content: Content created to educate your audience. Prove your thought leadership position, show trust and credibility and be unique.
Engagement content: Content created to encourage interactivity with your brand, to allow your audience to engage with you. This is the promotional activity of the new social world, think about creating action.
Dump the whitepaper
Whitepapers were designed to contain detailed information but not to be particularly exciting. They are now used as the blanket name for a lot of content in the B2B world, which seems to mean no creativity, very little thought and certainly a big yawn for the audience.
Thought leadership content has a place, but why can’t it be a video piece, an interactive publication or a combination of a few different types of media? We are all different and we consume content in many different ways. Ask your audience, look at your consumption stats and create true multimedia experiences.
Time to build a content culture
Content strategy is an odd one; what does it mean? It is all based on the principle that content should never be forced; you have to create a culture that allows content to flow from every individual in your organisation in real-time. Of course you should have a content plan to create high-level content that is structured, but the blogging phenomenon has shown that spur of the moment content can and should be the most engaging to the audience.
What next?
As a final thought, here are four exercises to get you moving:
1. Create a content checklist; include criteria that must be fulfilled around creativity, entertainment and the content buckets outlined.
2. Audit your existing content. If it doesn’t make the grade, archive it.
3. Find the internal content advocates and put them to work on creating unique content.
4. Create a true multimedia content piece, find a unique angle and do something completely different, add video with audio and text and see what happens.
