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Does Your Radio Station's Social Behavior Make Fans 'Ship' Their Pants?
April 16, 2013
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There is a difference in "doing" social and "being" social.
All too often we see brands (even radio and its personalities) picking and choosing who they respond to socially or just not responding at all. But there is a human element to social media and the brands that put the right people in place to execute the acknowledgment piece – the being social piece - of their social strategy are the rare outlets that will thrive in this arena.
By now you may have already seen the "Ship my pants" video created by the ad agency DraftFCB for Kmart.
The innuendo is enough to make even cynics laugh (and garner Kmart well over 5.5 million views in just two days). But what elevated this video is the way in which Kmart's social team tapped into power of the personal touch.
When you watch Kmart's social team on Twitter, you can actually feel them having fun, thanking folks who share the video. In fact, the following exchange below was completely unexpected:
That was pretty cool but what made this interaction more remarkable was when Kmart's social team also acknowledged a friend of mine during our conversation about this video:
And the personal touch went beyond Twitter – Kmart was responding to fans all over Facebook and Google Plus, too.
Great content can have little value without an active social fan base making it the center of talk. Today, it's our actions that can speak louder than the content we create.
With brands – as in life – we teach people how to treat us. The more complacent we are socially, the more we are teaching our fans to be complacent about us.
The more exciting we are with social exchange, the more revved up fans get with our brands.
Just look at another team - Denny's Diner's social ninjas – they clearly enjoy weaving themselves in the brand chatter and communicating with folks.
It's nearly impossible to build an active social base if interacting is viewed as something you "have to do." If you do not enjoy being social, stay far away from your brands social assets.
Fans will sniff you out because it's just not cool if acknowledgment is a chore.
Social is personal.
Identify the folks within your building who love "being" social. Any nut can do social – but who can actually be social? It's not about mastering platforms – it's about mastering behavior - never missing an opportunity to be good to people.
The right kind of response can keep your station (and content) in the hands and the hearts of the fans, leading to loyalty, ratings, and relevance in this distracted media landscape.
And when you start reaping those benefits bestowed on brands that excel at acknowledgment - it just might make you 'ship' yourself!
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