the influencer is you

Hey Studios, "What Is Your Social Media Strategy?"

I just read an article about how Movie studios are trying to harness the Twitter effect as Tweet driven word of mouth can quickly erode any momentum that a movie has created going into opening day weekend. I think movie studios need to look at the bigger picture "social media effect" where Twitter is just one piece of the puzzle.

It is refreshing that some studio marketers are moving away from the ,"what is your (insert Twitter, Facebook or MySpace) strategy" but are for the first time asking, "what is your social media strategy?"

Blogs, microblogs, the social nets and search create an ecosystem that any solid online marketing plan needs to take into consideration.

As studios continue to embrace social media marketing strategies, the enthusiast fans will be the winners w/ more behind the scenes looks, more access to the stars in the show, more insight into the amazing effects created and more killer experiences that will arm them to help combat any negative social media buzz. Arm the army. They will fight for you.

Remembering The Crescendo Campaign

Spending so much time with studio marketers/gaming publishers in the last few weeks brought back great memories. One really stood out.

I remember going to a UCLA/USC game in 2002 with a good friend and colleague, Stephen Royes (one of the founders of Blast Radius.)  We were obsessed with refining the online marketing model for bringing a videogame to market and had to submit a concept for an Activision title to Ignited Minds the following week.

Remember When? Media sellers sold banners boring marketers with all the amazing sizes and placements.

Three beers into the tailgate and  “The Crescendo Campaign” was born.

Whisper-Murmur-Rap-Preach-Scream.

Whisper to the enthusiasts, generate some reaction, spark a conversation, preach your differentiators against your competition and scream when you have learned enough to scream the right message.

The idea was nothing revolutionary, but the words really helped frame how to think about your plan strategically. In many ways, this was all about conversational marketing, where the assumption was that marketers just “screamed” online and must more work needed to be done building groundswell through asset distribution, engaging influencers and giving them something to talk about. At IGN  (and soon to be MySpace) we ran scores of successful campaigns for some of the top videogames embracing these philosophies.

Does your social media strategy go from a whisper to a scream?

Marketers Need To Think Like A Publisher

As online publishers fight to survive through growing their traffic online, engaging their audience and finding creative ways to monetize their page views, creating a dialogue with a loyal user base has never been as important. 

Marketers can learn from this in their approach to social media marketing and start thinking like a publisher. Here are five tips that can help spark conversation, as well as build the much needed relationship with your most valuable assets: your brand advocates.

1. Give them something to talk about.Burger King did something right when they created the "Sacrifice" campaign on Facebook which asked Facebooker's to "sacrifice" eight friends in exchange for a free Whopper. Thousands of people were asking, "do I remove those people from high school that aren't really my friend, maybe that scary guy in accounting or that ex-girlfriend that won't leave me alone.  This played out across the blogosphere and was redistributed thanks to all the "sharing' functionality and various networks like Twitter.

2. Listen. Monitor what people are saying about your brand and listen after you engage them. Recently a brand I work with slipped up and released a press release about a product launch too early. Management freaked. Their social media champion was able to showcase all the great discussion of what people were saying and worked closely with the pr / marketing team to use that discussion to clarify some missunderstandings and improve their positioning.

3. Foster relationship through offering social currency. Your brand advocates obsess over things that you might see mundane. Think about how you can arm them with "inside information," cool opportunities that they might not normally experience or features within their social media destinations that will make them happy. Arm bloggers with opportunities they can feed their audience, sponsor features that make their blogging easier, offer skins, design themes, layouts so they can show off gorgeous designs on their profiles/blogs.

4. Align with influencers to create something unforgettable. Creating incentives that are in line with the needs of your target market helps drive adoption and helps cut through the overwhelming clutter.  What is the dream vacation that you can provide to an influential blogger? How can you create the ultimate sports vacation? Once you create the idea, then the question to answer is: How can I amplify that amazing opportunity throughout blogs, social networks through driving conversation, commenting, sharing, etc.

Happy Marketing!