Some of the gang from BKV are in the process of developing a social media campaign for one of their clients. (The 60 Second Marketer, as you may know, is a division of BKV, which is a digital and direct response agency.)

BKV has done social media campaigns for a variety of well-known clients including AT&T, the March of Dimes, Harrah’s and Equifax, so the BKV gang knows their stuff. But they called me in to help brainstorm some ideas on a new social media campaign for one of their clients.

An interesting insight came out of the brainstorming session. It was so interesting, we gave it a name — Social Media Magnetism.

What is Social Media Magnetism?

Social Media Magnetism is when your brand is so powerful, that consumers will come to you to be part of your brand. In other words, they’ll go out of their way to be affiliated and associated with your company because it gives them a sense of cache.

How can you tell if your brand has enough cache to be a Social Media Magnet? There’s a test that’s deceptively simple, but it works every time — If your logo shows up on sweat shirts, bumper stickers or backpacks, then your brand qualifies as a Social Media Magnet.

Some good examples of brands with Social Media Magnetism include Apple, Starbucks and Nike, all of which have enough brand power that people will go out of their way to be affiliated with them.

But what if you’re not Apple, Starbucks or Nike? What happens for the other 99.9% of the brands without that kind of star power?

If that’s the case, then your brand has to go to the consumer. In other words, your brand has to use social media to reach out to the consumer in some way, shape or form.

How do you do that? You have to use the “What’s In It For Me?” formula. By that, we mean that a consumer must feel as though your social media campaign offers them something so unique or so valuable, that they’re willing to engage with you to acquire what you’re offering.

Remember, if your brand already has Social Media Magnetism, you don’t have to go to the consumer — they’ll come to you. For an example of this, check out MyStarbucksIdea.com. Starbucks has so much star power (sorry for the pun) that they can put up a website inviting people to submit their ideas to Starbucks.

But they’re Starbucks.

You’re not Starbucks.

(Unless you actually are Starbucks in which case we’d like to say “Hello, Starbucks!”)

Anyway, back to our point — if you’re a company that sells paper or pet supplies or printers, then you probably don’t have the cache that Apple, Starbucks or Nike has, so you’re going to have to reach out to the consumer to get them engaged with your social media campaign.

How can you do this?

By creating a campaign that gives the consumer something of value that they don’t currently have.

This can be a year’s worth of pet supplies. It can be an entry into a drawing for a vacation to Hawaii. Or it can be putting their name on a billboard in Times Square. But it has to be something of value, something beyond just being associated with your brand.

Again, if you’re Starbucks, you can put up the MyStarbucksIdea.com website and, yes, people will come to the site and engage with your brand.

But if you’re not Starbucks, then you’ll have to go to your customer, you’ll have to reach out to them, and you’ll have to give them something tangible in return for engaging with your brand.

Make sense?

So, with Social Media Magnetism in mind, here are several questions to ask yourself next time you’re developing a social media campaign:

1. Does our brand have Social Media Magnetism? (Again, unless your brand has the star power of Apple, Starbucks or Nike, you’re probably not a Social Media Magnet. Sorry.)
2. Assuming your company isn’t a Social Media Magnet, what offer are you going to provide your customers to encourage them to engage with your campaign?
3. Does the offer have the “What’s In It For Me?” component? Does it offer something of value to the prospect? Does it sizzle?

If the answer to the questions in #3 is “no,” then you’ll have to go back to the drawing board and try to come up with some offer that makes engaging with your social media campaign worthwhile.

Good luck with your social media campaign. We hope you knock it out of the park. Can you keep us posted on your ideas? We’d love to hear how you do.

Thursday, October 22nd, 2009, 5:17 am   |   Social Media  |  RSS feed |  Respond  |  Trackback