Why do you want to know what I’m doing this weekend?
One of my pet hates (that generally gets me involved in conflict with anyone that suggests such a thing for a client) is brands asking fans/likers/followers “How was your weekend?” or “What are you doing this weekend?”.
What real value does that add to the community?
You could argue that if a brand is “social” or “fun” then they have the right to ask such a question. Imagine a Facebook/ Twitter where many more brands enter into this kind of conversation. Imagine the news feed mess? I think that in some cases it has been forgotten that although we may loosely “own” the page/profile we setup, engagement is “earned”.
Q: Why do consumers/customers/fans like or follow us in the first place?
A: Because as brands we give them some sort of reward for doing so. Whether that is through association, exclusives, information, content, competitions, free things… they are all rewards.
Engagement is pointless, unless some form of value is being added. We can get 100 people on our page of 1 million to tell us what they did at the weekend, great… but why?
We all have one of those friends, the friends that just speak for the sake of speaking (I can name a few but I won’t). Brands need to be carful that they are not seen as one of “those” friends. Reason being, you tend to stop listening to them as they don’t have too much to add to a conversation, apart from the sound of their own voice.
Brands, do you want to be seen as the annoying over chatty friend, or the friend you go to for advice as what you say is valued?
Image from Flickr user Spectrious – http://www.flickr.com/photos/25015845@N07/2759818789/sizes/z/in/photostream/
Jason Fried: Why work doesn’t happen at work
inter // states
inter // states from Samuel Cockedey on Vimeo.
What the F**k is Social Media NOW?
Digital Spillage #DigitalSpillage
Something that I have been thinking about for a while is the shift in ‘Digital’ or ‘The Internet’ from being confined to the screen. It is now penetrating the real world and adding value to it via mobile, outdoor installations and touch screens etc. It has been a common topic of conversation that ‘The Internet’ has made people less social… hermits.
With the rise of geo-bassed services enabling users to tell friends where they are and what they are doing, ‘The Internet’ is now driving people together socially rather than creating more basement loving individuals. At the end of the day humans are social. The June Trend Watching briefing was a piece on ‘Mass Mingling’, which detailed how and why technology was bringing people together.
On Saturday I went to ‘The Creators Project‘ which was an exhibition of technology/art/films/music/installations/panel discussions. Joachim Sauter from Art+Com was speaking at the event and had quite a few interesting things to say about technology in space. His company recently created the concept behing the new BMW ad (which was actually created for a museum installation not an ad, but was ‘used’ by their ad agency). One of the many things I took from his talk was ‘How can technology become part of a real space and add to it, not become an eyesore’. All of his work was there to add value in some way, to help tell a story, not technology for the sake of.
Mobile internet is a massive force behind this shift and spillage, for instance out of the 400 million (500 this week apparently) 100 million people are accessing Facebook through their mobile. The iPhone and other smartphone devices have contributed to the massive growth, feeding the habit of the hyper connected.
This natural spillage from the screen to reality is opening up more and more opportunities for brands to communicate with people. Uploaded 10 months ago by OneDotZero, this video shows an interactive mobile piece that was created for Nokia. Chris Allen who was also a panelist at The Creators Project spoke about a piece of work that he has just finished named ‘LDN24‘. This is another good example of how digital can be integrated into the real world. This piece pulls in live stats, tweets and info from live database sources.
Digital is in the real world… it is not separate… it is part of it. Integrated. Not a silo. How can we use digital and technology to add some value, to connect with our audience?
