Today I checked the Twitter feed of one of my go-to guys for great content, Undercurrent digital strategist Mike Arauz, and happened upon this conversation between him and Ivan Askwith, senior strategist at Big Spaceship:
mikearauz what if you empowered 10,000 people who loved your brand to share, cooperate, and take collective action on the web?
ivanovitch @mikearauz Counter-question: what can a brand do to let people share, cooperate & take collective action that they can't do for themselves?
mikearuaz @ivanovitch right, i think that what the brand brings to the table is the ability to introduce a large number of people to each other
This strikes me as the crux of the issue around what a brand can/should contribute to the social media experience – that it uniquely enables people to connect in a real way, revealing common passions and creating real-world ways to share them. This is what I consider the game-changing secret ingredient to brand success in social media.
Nothing demonstrates this principle better than Town Holler. Leveraging the location-based mobile platform of nightlife brand Foursquare, Conrad Lisco and Richard Schatzberger created Town Holler, an in-person pub crawl that brings together the most active and passionate users of the service, the Foursquare Mayors. (Huh? Foursquare? Mayors? Get your answers here) The great turnout (see pics here), the active interest on Twitter (#townholler) and the NYTimes coverage are all evidence of Town Holler’s success. So is the fact that it’s already generated a wave of anticipation of users from San Francisco (location of the next Town Holler) to Amsterdam. But beyond the success of the event, Town Holler is even more telling of the success of the Foursquare brand, by revealing how it taps into a true human passion and generates real brand-based user interaction. How do I know? Because Town Holler creators Lisco and Schatzberger aren’t employees of Foursquare. Just passionate users of the service.
Perhaps using an already digital/mobile/social media service like Foursquare as an example of brand doing great things seems unfair. But any brand, no matter how brick-and-mortar or B2B, can learn something from Foursquare, because it exemplifies the six key ingredients of building success in social media:
#1: Be Simple. Signing up takes 5 minutes. Checking in (how users indicate location to participate in the service) only takes 1 minute. The points and prizes that keep people checking in again and again are instantly calculated. Make it easy, make it fun, and they will come.
#2: Offer Social Utility. The service allows users to find current friends and meet new friends by revealing like-minded revelers nearby.
#3: Increase Personal Status. By letting individuals share the places they visit, their favorite things to do at each spot, and the ranking they’ve gathered through check-ins, Foursquare automatically tallies each person’s “cool points.” Whether or not coolness is quantifiable is debatable, but I’m definitely just as apt to check out the To-Do lists of the high ranks as I am my friends.
#4: Provide Relevant Information from Genuine Sources. Foursquare is centered around users’ common passion – restaurants and nightlife – but helps people find what they like most through seeing detailed tips from users, like what a certain place serves, does particularly well, or if it has great specials certain nights of the week. And because each user has nothing more than their own personal rep at stake, there is little reason not to trust the recommendations.
#5: Measure Me. As the Internet increases access to data, we as individuals have become more and more obsessed with knowing our stats. How many views of my Flickr photostream? How many hits – unique, daily, monthly – on my blog? When? From where? We want to know the details. Foursquare provides stats that let you track where you go, how often, how many places are new, on what days you go out most – etc.
#6: Facilitate Integration Control. With blogs, Facebook profiles, Twitter feeds, Flickr photostreams, etc. as the norm of now, we are always looking for a better way to bring it all together – or keep it all apart. Foursquare allows integration to Twitter, sharing with friends on Foursquare – or, you can hide your Foursquare check-ins, stay blissfully out of the spotlight, and still earn all the points you deserve.
These six ingredients aren’t tremendously new – though Foursquare does an excellent job of executing on them. But Town Holler takes Foursquare’s social brand success to the next level. It reveals the seventh and super special secret ingredient of what it means for a brand to do social right:
#7: Inspire Real-World Connections. Get your passionate user-base talking to each other. Even better, get them face-to-face. Be the engine that helps them forge relationships. Create a foundation from which these relationships can grow.
Super Special Secret Ingredient #7 is the one that shows that your brand is being adopted into the lives of your users. That it’s becoming part of a recurring ritual. That people are no longer dialoging with your brand but internalizing it as part of their personal “innerlogue.”
And that, as Mike and Ivan hit on this morning, is really what a brand can – and should – bring to the table.
