Matt Wurst

This is Part II in a two-part series about how brands can strengthen relationships through social content. Read Part I — Creation.

The need to have great creative, certainly not unique to social media, is a marketing foundation that has been around almost as long as the Old Testament itself. (The Ten Commandments was the world’s first Creative Brief ever written, really.) But digital communities are a testament to a new way of aggregating, organizing, sharing and reacting to creative content that social media makes possible.

Curation, itself, isn’t exactly new. Advocacy has existed in traditional formats for generations, but brand evangelism has a new pulpit in the form of social. Even if your budget limitations require you to pass over the big, flashy content revelations, communities can still connect us with others who share common interests. Your savior comes in the form of community management, specifically those well-seeded conversation starters as well as ongoing, expert moderation.

To celebrate its 125th Anniversary, Coca-Cola asked fans to share their favorite Coke moments. The brand then curated the fan-submitted messaging and included it in a stunning 3D illumination. (Coca-Cola is a 360i client).

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This is Part I in a two-part series about how brands can strengthen relationships through social content.

The decisions that brand marketers make with respect to their social media strategies are complex and challenging. We know that a multi-directional conversation with consumers is a primary objective within digital communities, but there are limited budgets to contend with and a growing number of social platforms requiring attention. As a result, marketers are often forced to choose whether to create or curate content within these communities.

The lucky ones might be able to do both. However, if a brand is neither creating nor curating content in and across its social communities, they are failing to take advantage of an opportunity to strengthen a relationship with potential or existing consumers. The first part of this series centers on creation.

UGG Australia shares photographs from a recent blogger event with its Facebook community (360i client).

In the beginning, there is creation. While the power of social media now is in its ability to amplify a message, the most important aspect of audience engagement is having good content. If everyone else is aggregating or sharing information, those brands that can actually create an idea, thought or piece of media have something unique to offer. Creativity begets conversation and collaboration – the cornerstones of a vibrant community.

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By the time I was five years old, my parents began to openly wonder about me. I was barely able to Velcro my own sneakers, I still wet the bed and picked my nose. I couldn’t swim. And perhaps most notably, I had already been saved by the Heimlich Maneuver on three separate occasions.

By the age of 10, I had already lost all of my baby teeth, was an All-Star on my Little League baseball team and had won the local Math Fair competition. I could speak four languages (including American Sign Language) and had already held hands with a girl at summer camp dance. For the awkward kid who got off to a rough start, it was not a bad five year stretch.

Via blog.webdistortion.com

Twitter, which celebrated its fifth birthday this week, is also a bit of a late bloomer. Sure, it’s hard to imagine a company that has been valued at anywhere from $3 to 10 billion is a late bloomer, but of the 225 million registered accounts on Twitter, less than 10 percent are active on any given day. And most importantly, it fails the “My Parents Test.” Not only are my mother and father not on Twitter (unlike Facebook and YouTube), but they cannot explain what it is or how it works with any reasonable degree of accuracy.
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From Gutenberg to Zuckerberg, the way in which we consume content is changing. The range of options is growing excessively large while the range of our attention spans is shrinking at an excessive pace. No one wants to sit through 1,000-word blog posts (present readership excluded, of course) because words, alone, no longer tell the whole story.

Which is why Tumblr might just be the answer. So what is Tumblr? First of all, shame on you for not having already discovered my Tumblr feed. Shameful plug aside, Tumblr is a cross between a blog, a Twitter feed and a Facebook profile that gives creators a fast, flexible and free platform to share their content. But whereas other blogging platforms focus on the text, Tumblr makes it easy to post text, media and more in your stream.

Example: The New Yorker Tumblr feed

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Once upon a time, not so long ago, your boss going on vacation meant a week’s worth of peace and quiet around the office.

Nowadays, there is nowhere to hide. Whether on a beach in Hawaii, in the air on a cross-country flight or stuck in a conference room back at the office, digital technology and social media now connect us all in real-time. And if we’re constantly connected and engaging with each other, the expectation is that brands, both big and small, are “on call” whenever and wherever we need them.

No one understands this better than our very own Sarah Hofstetter, who runs the Brand Strategy and Emerging Media team here at 360i (@Pezmeister1 on Twitter). Sarah planned every detail of her family’s trip to Hawaii, her first vacation in who knows how long? But when weather issues resulted in the late departure of the first leg through Dallas and put her entire trip in jeopardy, Sarah turned to the only friend she had left: Twitter.

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Per an announcement on its Lat Long blog, Google is now allowing businesses to respond to consumer reviews within Google Places listings. Google Places, formerly known as the Local Business Center, was launched in April and provides businesses with the ability to get found, communicate with customers and provide real-time updates and offers.

Prior to Google Places, a brand’s local business information was viewable only in a Google Map bubble within search results. With the advent Google Places, a permanent HTML page and Google web address become available for places and businesses (see images below).

Caption: Google Map listing with reviews (appears within search results)

Caption: Google Place Pages are permanent HTML pages that contain additional information about venues, as well as maps, photos, reviews and more.

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Image by apricoco via Flickr

I’ve never been the kind of person who makes New Year’s resolutions. Perhaps it was a fear that I’d be admitting that I was not perfect the year before. Or maybe I just had too much work to catch up on after the holidays to focus on myself. Either way, this is the year that all changes.

As social marketers, we are instrumental in bringing about change — specifically changing the way people perceive brands and the means by which we communicate with one another. So what better way to embark on this new undertaking than to base my resolutions for 2010 within the larger context of social marketing? At least by focusing on all of us, I’m not admitting any personal imperfections…

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