Tag Archive: facebook

Are digital camapigns (finally) adopting social practices?

Posted Jun.08, 2010 under Campaigns, Social Psychology

I really liked the new Cornetto’s online campaign called ‘Love Ho Jaane De’ in association with MTV India. It’s in essence a user generated contest to leverage the on-ground activities happening via MTV India as the event manager. But I personally loved the portal for a variety of reasons:

  1. It’s not just a basic information portal but acts like a mini community of its own, which is not only scalable but dynamic too.
  2. Users can upload, share and vote on stuff. That’s almost the whole plethora of social interactions that are possible included here. User generated content can be pushed around in the community via a seamless commenting system.
  3. Activity streams for featuring new and featured content.
  4. Taking care of the database via Login / Register functionality, and of course has a Facebook Connect option too.

But there are still some areas where new stuff can be added to make sure user stickiness and brand influence increases. The website gives a chance for users to upload their content, yet does not give any functionalities for telling their stories. And human beings are suckers for telling stories, aren’t we? Check out Gauravonomics article on the importance of story-telling in Social Media Marketing and also Graham Brown’s research on why youth and new media is about giving the audience a chance to tell their story to the brand and other users. Some tips to scale up the engagement and passion at the Cornetto community:

  1. After I upload my content, I need a place to tell the story behind it? Maybe a status update or a detailed description.
  2. I want to connect to other users who share the same passion as me like acting, singing and movie-making. Why not give me a simple forum or discussions thread based activity stream?
  3. The campaign has a Twitter and Facebook presence (obviously), but frankly I don’t think it’s needed here. The Facebook fan page is flooded with content that should have been on this community. Or is either duplicate content.
  4. The app on the Facebook page, just redirects me to the site itself (WTF?)
  5. The Twitter handle again looks as if it’s being done for the sake of impressing the client and offering ’social media solutions’ .. plus the tonality doesn’t even sync in with the brand characteristics.

Update:

I went back to the handle after two days, and surprisingly all the conversations are gone! I guess someone became wiser, or the client didn’t like such a tactic. Sadly, they have just self promoting updates with links back to the site now.

[blackbirdpie url="http://twitter.com/luvhojaanede/status/11752838791"]

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Like vs. Become a fan

Posted Apr.23, 2010 under Facebook, Social networks, Social Psychology

Anandan Pillai, a PhD student at MDI, Gurgaon and a Summer Research Fellow at Superchooha writes on his blog about the new introduction of ‘Like’ buttons by Facebook. leaving behind the ‘Become a fan’ tag.

And he talks about it from a perspective that most of us didn’t see – from a brand’s point of view. And he makes some solid arguments to prove his proposals right.

However, what surprised me was the context of argument, almost everyone argued from the perspective of individual users (read “customers” if you are marketer). Now, this took me aback!!!

I feel, when someone says “I like this”, it doesn’t make bring a kick in me, because I feel ya you might me 1 of other billion odd people who might be liking this. On the contrary, when you say me “I am a fan of Facebook”, this ushers the adrenaline in me and makes my stupid brain think, why the hell this person is fan of some strange animal called “facebook”, what’s so special about it?, and this curiosity leads to search for information about “facebook” (which means receiving new unique visitors), getting acclimatized with it (increasing chances of conversion), and maybe becoming a fan of it too (yeahh that’s my target at the end of the day). Does it sound good (if not great)???? Hit me back if any marketer disagrees to it.

I personally think it was a good move for businesses everywhere, maybe not from a marketing point of view because Facebook definitely wants to expand the radius of its social graph, unless it suffers the fate of Friendster and MySpace. To do that, Facebook needs to become the ubiquitous social identity. The de facto. The omnipresent. Now to do that Facebook needs to enter websites and every online operations. And by killing the more passionate word called ‘fan’ Facebook enters a more neutral ground of ‘liking’ which everyone can live with. And doesn’t mind indulging in.

I can just be interested in something and I can like it. Thus putting it into my social stream and exposing the ‘liked’ content to my friends thus making it go viral. More likes >> More content into social streams >> More hits back to website >> Facebook = happy and Content owner = Happy!

And I have seen this again and again. Brand managers get so fascinated by the phrase ‘My brand has x000 fans on Facebook’ that they start forgetting the real value of the word ‘fan’ .. A fan is a wildly passionate evangelist of your brand who loves it. Revels in it. And tells others proudly about his fandom.

How many fans of a page are actually at that stage? Doesn’t it conclude that most of them just liked your brand anyways and were NOT fans.

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