Posts tagged marketing
Why social media is like local newspapers
Dec 12th
When running a campaign a good strategy always used to be to ask your supporters to write letters to their local newspaper. Local newspapers are far more widely read than their national equivalents, you’re much more likely to get your photo published in them, and because of their more tightly defined audience they present a much greater chance to contextualise your message and suggest options for local action.
In many ways, that is the campaign tactic that a strategy for web 2.0/social media should build from. It’s not about having a presence on flickr, delicious, facebook, upcoming, myspace, or any of the dozens of other “web 2.0″ sites, though an official presence may be useful in some cases and personal experiences with all of them is a good idea. Instead it’s about resourcing your key supporters to be there for you, just as they would in their local papers.
Your supporters already have networks of friends/contacts in these settings that it would take you a lot of time to build. Those friends are going to pay attention to what is being said because of who said it, when if it came from an unknown campaign officer they’d be far less likely to read it. You’re likely to be busy at your events, but your supporters are free to take photos they can post on flickr and which their friends will look at whether or not they currently follow your campaign. You can put as much time as you like into creating a facebook group, but unless your friends and your supporters’ friends join it, it’ll never take off in the “viral” style you’re probably hoping for.
The task then is to educate your supporters. Encourage them to create and disseminate their own content, and back that up with good quality briefings, access to take photos, and any other options that make sense in your context. And to keep an eye on that content so you can pick from the best of it. We’ve found asking greenbelters to tag their photos with a given tag for each year hugely effective not only in making sure we get included in “top tags” lists, but also in giving us an easy way to access the resulting content and get a broader view of the feel of the festival than we otherwise would.
It’s never been and never will be possible to truly get your message everywhere. New tools may help push your content into new spaces, but the only way to effectively disseminate your message is to open it up and let others carry it for you, interpreting it through their lenses. It’s not a new idea, but it’s one that’s far more important now than it ever has been.
Facebook’s game changing new ads system
Nov 7th
There have been rumours upon rumours that facebook was going to launch something for musicians soon, and that they were also readying a new advertising system. Today it turned out that not only were they doing both, but both are part of the same strategy.
Announced by Leah Perlman on the Facebook blog, facebook’s new ads system breaks down into two parts:
- “Brands” can now create Facebook Pages, which combine some of the functionality of a personal profile with that of a group. For “brand” you can also read company, artist, campaign, or nearly anything else that might want to advertise.
- “Social Ads” allow Facebook to target ads at people based on their friends’ activities. So if I were to make a certain purchase, mark myself a fan of a band, or rent a given DVD, and facebook knows about it, facebook could tell my friends about that and sell them a related product.
David Emery was quick to write up some thoughts on how this development could impact and help bands. While the immediate option to create a clear presence for something people might be “passionate about” is clearly significant, he’s absolutely right that it’s the “Social Ads” that have the potential to truly change the social advertising game as they leverage data more completely than has been done before. The intrusive possibility of them is potentially quite scary and as clear leaders in the field, we can only hope that facebook are making privacy central to this new approach.
Every band and every campaign really ought to be headed over right now to set up their Facebook Page and ensure they get their preferred name. However functional this turns out to be, it’s highly likely that it’ll be worth the effort. It’s not yet clear how the Social Ads side will work, or what it will cost, but it’s also probably a good idea to start thinking about how you might use it. What might your fans/supporters do that it would be good to tell their friends about? What might make your events or other activities compelling as a social activity? They’re not new questions, but this announcement ought to bring them into new focus.