Social Marketing Framework (Part 4 of 5)

Our series continues with the third part of our social marketing framework: How social media execution can help accelerate our message. Message distribution has always relied on sharing; in fact the entire concept of word of mouth marketing was based on peer-to-peer sharing. We also know that word of mouth is very powerful because it typically comes from a credible source. Credibility shrinks the sales cycle.

Social technologies have sharing attributes and features that have changed the way we architect our content. Now, all content can be distributed with the goal of a follow on sharing action. This sharing action accelerates the message distribution. Just last week we sent out a press release about a new partnership with InfoGroup. Within a few hours this announcement was being sent to thousands of people on Twitter who in turn sent the message to numerous others. We monitored the process closely and witnessed the distribution speed and efficiency that socially engineered content can bring to an organization. Since Twitter has limitations on characters, we had to engineer the message to fit and therefore we say that the content was socially engineered for Twitter.

The Iranian election is an interesting case study in socially engineered content distribution. The challenger in the election has many supporters who are using social spaces to push messages to others. Ask yourself: How does this content need to be created to encourage sharing? Keep in mind tone, word count and call to action. Social spaces provide powerful platforms for sharing and we need to create content with this in mind.

As with any set of tools we need to continually ask ourselves: Why would someone share? What is the value proposition for sharing? What is the reason? The latter is the question that matters most and the one that we often fail to answer. Let’s be honest – your content may seem great to you but will your customers, partners and community share it for you? The answer is probably not, unless of course there is a compelling reason. Find that reason, architect your content for sharing and place it in social spaces. Then let your message acceleration begin.