Notes on Social Media Mastery

Today I joined a webinar to listen to a live talk by Ian McKendrick a Social Media and Technology Strategist called Social Media Mastery run by Brand Republic. Social Media and its impact on Creative Advertising is a hot topic within academic and industry circles (see this blog at Brass agency). McKendrick said some interesting things, which I've organised into themes: actions, language, social campaigns, variety, future and thoughts.

 Actions
 He began by illustrating a scenario where he used http://www.twellow.com/ (yellow pages for twitter) which allows you to search by key words/subject. He searched keynote speakers as part of his consultancy role. Within hours he had a query and tweeted his blog address, which resolved the issue and contained a 'call to action'. His blog asks people to contact him with any queries and contains his email, twitter and facebook addresses. In a week he had recieved over £5000s worth of work. McKendrick emphaises that calls to action are vital to social-media-communications and gave some examples: join our mailing list, sign up to an event and tell your friends.
Language
 He discussed the importance of using the right language, giving the example of google's ad words.  He explained that any social communications need to contain the same words as those used by social networks e.g.facebook groups, bloggers and any type of online communities of practice. This is so that the communiciation ranks better on google otherwise known as SEO (search engine optimisation). McKendrick explained that this new process of using online conversational language entails a) building communties of interest b) giving something of value to people and c) utterly omitting 'sales talk'. So creatives need to find out where 'fans' of products and brands hang out and, as Paul Burns (copywriter TBWA) once told me 'talk with, not at people'.
Social Campaigns
The notion of giving people something of value also links to a talk by Andy Fowler ECD (Brothers and Sisters) available on the IPA Creatives channel - worth a watch (25mins). Fowler and McKendric illustrate the types of valuable content that social media campaigns can host. Fowler points to Nike Grid  whereas McKendric described a personal health campaign that began with creating a group twitter account with hash tag. Using hootsuite.com a social media dashboard he conntected with websites supermarket e.g. health pages, fat secret.com and Apps e.g. Pedommeter pro (GPS). This personal campaign resulted in 550 fans/followers in a few days. Among these were health and fitness coaches, health clubs, chefs and even professional food photographers.

Variety

Social networkers, like learners like to process information in different ways e.g. text, image, location, audio. McKendric contends that variety leads to engagement.There are lots of tools available, which creatives should be aware of, like social media dashboards, tweetdeck, cotweet, hubspot, spredfast and tweetadder. Social bookmarking sites like delicious are useful for content syndication e.g audio boo is intergrated with itunes, which is a massive platform.

Future

The future is the knowledge economy. Where knowledge and 'know how' is shared freely and content is king. Give it all away is McKendrick's advice, write for fans using community words and phrases. Promote and share. Social media strategies entail an investigative role and thrive through conversations on new media platforms e.g. blogs that also contain imagery that creates/reinforces brand value. McKendricks gives the metaphor of creating a honey pot; social media strategy is about making something attractive, something that people will tell all their friends about (creates buzz). He adds that it can be particularly useful for B2B campaigns. Finally, he ends by point to the 'next big thing' - curatorial software like pinterest which gathers 'collections' of 'stuff' that people are interested in, in real-time, a sort of bespoke magazine. As you can guess many products, services and brands will appear in these 'live' publications.  

Thoughts

In what ways do you think that using social media strategy could impact upon conventions of copywriting and art direction? Please share your thoughts and comment if you have found this post of interest.

Hopes and dreams cannot be exchanged or refunded exhibition by Paula Chambers

The talk by Paula Chambers earlier today was really interesting. Particulaly in terms of the ideas that influenced the objects such as experiences of motherhood and the study of (1990s) feminism with Griselda Pollock. The subversive details included in the two sculptural pieces Daddy's Little Princess and Daddy's Little Girl were particularly provocative. Made with vintage sewing patterns in the form of two single-bed headboards these pieces depict behaviours by females, not usually found in commercial imagery. One of the panels in the headboard made of 1950s patterns includes a girl holding a copy of The Second Sex by Simone de beauvoir. This reminded me of all the clothes that my mother made for me with the skills she learnt from her mother (pictured left). Likewise the 'fake archive' Mother Knows Best for Beatrice reveals moments where anger is expressed towards children by their mothers. This was shown in the visual language of illustrations by Beatrice Potter, whose stories often include violence. The exhibtion continues until 10th April 2012 enjoy!