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Context Rules Social Media

April 22, 2009 By 5 Comments

mazeAuthor: Alasdair Munn

tcg: The Communication Group

“Content is King” You hear that a lot at the moment. Having targeted content that can travel, address different learning styles, grow and have value added to it has replaced the notion that the website is the destination. People are searching for content. To put some context to this think of RSS feeds and Twitter search.

Content no longer sits on a website and hopes for people to come along. It travels. Not only does it travel from the website, smart websites are putting relevant content in front of their website visitors according to their profiles, preferences, searching and navigation behaviour. Social media tools, analytics, CMS, LMS and CRM are being combined to ensure audience and content relevance. The form content is delivered in, video, audio, photo, graphic, text etc. is no longer seen as merely innovative or a gimmick, rather as aligning to learning styles, expectations and delivery mechanisms. Context.

The relationship between content and context is two pronged.

  1. Content is created in relation to the context it will be consumed in
  2. Context directs content.

For content to be relevant it has to be created in the context of your social media strategy. Understanding the following is a great start:

  1. Who are your audiences?
  2. Where they live online?
  3. What are their learning styles?
  4. How they are influenced?
  5. What are your competitors doing?
  6. How can you differentiate yourself?
  7. What is your USP? (Unique selling point)
  8. What should you be doing online?
  9. What are the rules?
  10. What resources and tools do you have at your disposal?

Aligning your available resources and tools to your content goals seems obvious, but so much content is cobbled together in a piecemeal fashion. How many times, for example, have we seen a company start a YouTube channel and not update it?

Context rules social media. Keeping this in mind ensures we prepare, research and create strategies that align our goals with our audiences and resources. Relevant content and content delivery strategies will follow.

Photo by Howard Grees.

Filed Under: Social Media Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Power Profiling: take off your shoes

April 15, 2009 By 6 Comments

chris_owens

Author: Alasdair Munn

tcg: The Communication Group

I seldom write here about one of the aspects of my job that I like the best. Power Profiling. Power Profiling is about creating personas and understanding customers and audiences. It involves knowing how to communicate to them. Appreciating how they learn, how they are influenced. Knowing their decision-making processes, their values, norms, desires. Appreciating their aspirations and dreams.

Getting to the stage where you can truly think for your customer or audience takes time, effort, intuition, process, open-mindedness and receptivity.

The expression “before we truly understand a person we must walk a mile in their shoes”, is well known. The part that fewer people have heard, or live by is “Before we can walk in a persons shoes, we must first take off our own”

We all know we should “understand our audiences”. We talk about it all the time. Sometimes we even take notice and make an effort. How many of us go beyond demographics and snap opinion polls? Much of our efforts reflect the way we see our customers in relation to how we see our products, services or offerings.

We all have our preconceived ideas. The ways we are brought up reinforce attitudes, values and prejudices. Having filters that screen, delete, distort and generalize information and messages are part of what makes us human. Interpreting the world in relation to who we are, our life experiences and the shared values, norms and beliefs of the society we live in are effective defences against overload. However they also reinforce our paradigms and mindsets, creating self-fulfilling prophecies.

We are not going to get rid of our filters, nor should we. However recognising these filters, accepting that they are there and learning to deal with them lead to a greater understanding of alternative points of view.

Power Profiling is not about the organization; it is about their audiences. Some of what might be discussed during the process will relate directly to an organizations produces, services, or processes, but ultimately if we are to understand someone, we need to approach it from who they are and from their world view. Organizations are competing, not only with their competitors, but also with life in general. Understanding how an organization can fit into their audiences life in a manner that makes sense to them, adds value and gains buy in is key.

In many ways this is what we try to do with social media. Like with organizations, egos and filters can get in the way.

Photo by Chris Owen’s

Filed Under: Social Media Tagged With: , , , , , ,