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Kevin is the CEO of Watercooler, the world's largest fan community online for Sports and TV audiences.

He has led the company from its founding to over 20 million registered users across the Watercooler network. Watercooler's products enable passionate fans to connect with other fans inside their favorite social networks.

Prior to Watercooler, Kevin spent several years at the global venture capital firm Canaan Partners investing in digital media, consumer internet services, and online advertising companies.

Kevin took part in funding 10 companies during his tenure at Canaan Partners, deploying part of the firm's $2.3 billion of capital. Earlier in Kevin's career, he advised public technology companies on M&A and corporate finance as part of Deutsche Bank's investment banking arm in San Francisco.

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Online Advertising 2.0 – The Six Rules of Social Media Engagement

Written on
May 4, 2009 
Author
Kevin Chou  |
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Online Advertising 2.0 – The Six Rules of Social Media Engagement

socialmedia2_small.jpgADOTAS — Social Media Is Different: Embracing social media and making it part of the overall marketing strategy rather than simply part of an experimental budget is all the rage these days.

That is absolutely the right direction for agencies and advertisers to head, but they cannot lose sight of the fact that social media is vastly different from traditional online channels. Advertisers who don’t accept the need to approach and measure social media in a different way are doomed to executing sub-par campaigns and being left behind by their competitors.

Publishers must realize that advertisers looking to social media are expecting product features designed to put their brands in front of users in new and engaging ways. To further benefits, publishers should be continuously looking at how they can implement advertising solutions that simultaneously make their product better. That’s the nirvana of the interactive advertising world, especially as it relates to social media. While success is never guaranteed, we have developed six key rules of social media advertising that improve the likelihood for success.

Be Relevant: Relevance is paramount to user engagement. It doesn’t matter how creative or integrated a campaign is if the purpose is to get the community to embrace content that isn’t relevant to them. For example, if a publisher is trying to get its users age 18 to 35 to embrace Lipitor content, they are in for a long, hard road. That’s not to say online pharmaceutical campaigns cannot be impactful, but the product and message has to be targeted to the right, receptive audience because successful social media campaigns establish emotional connections between consumers and brands.

Be Authentic: You cannot fake the social component of social media. Campaigns that do not enable sharing or some sort of two-way interaction are just traditional display ads. Brands that treat campaigns as social will be more effective in the long run. If you’re creating original content, it must be relevant and genuine. Campaigns that are not completely transparent, such as the now defunct Wal-Marting Across America blog, risk damaging the brand while genuine, authentic programs such as Zappos’ use of Twitter build a solid brand as well as a loyal consumer following.

Be part of the product: Nothing will increase brand engagement like making it part of the normal user experience. Instead of competing for attention on the sidelines, be an integrated part of the action by providing advertising in the form of content (video trailers or quizzes) or sponsoring new and/or important product features. For instance, Gaia Online, a teen virtual world, implemented a campaign with Toyota integrating the teen-targeted Scion as a virtual good in its game. Users could purchase Scions and they quickly became a status symbol. Toyota’s brand message was successfully delivered to its target audience while Gaia implemented an engaging feature that delighted its users.

Don’t get in the way: There is a fine line between becoming part of the product and interrupting the user experience. To be successful, a social media campaign has to enhance the product without compromising the user experience. Advertisers and publishers who upset the balance risk alienating users and driving them away. Publishers must remember that the community is their lifeblood and infiltrating too aggressively could end up in disaster. Brands should be integrated in a way that makes them very visible, but not in a way that detracts from why the user visits the community in the first place.

Embrace the social graph: The whole point of social media is to be social, so why are there so many examples of brands haphazardly throwing up display ads on Facebook and other social networks? They want to reach demographics on social networks, but do not truly understand the medium. Brands that do the first four things we’ve discussed right while taking advantage of the built-in social hooks will reap the benefits when users spread the brand message virally.

Analyze the right metrics: It’s essential to approach implementing social media advertising differently, and measurement requires an equally fresh approach. With display advertising, reach and frequency are always going to be the primary metrics. When it comes to social media, impressions and unique users are still important, but only as they relate to engagement metrics such as community discussion and viral distribution. At the same time, brands should not discount the qualitative impact of social media – some things just cannot be measured.

Social media advertising and conversational marketing offer brands the ability to establish real relationships with their customers. But the online landscape is littered with the remains of campaigns gone bad, or those that never had a chance because of their implementation. Follow these six rules to give your campaign a fighting chance and you’ll be happy with the results.

– Express your opinion, comment below.





Reader Comments.

Great article. But social media is only one part of the marketing mix. I think this article does a good job of defining advertising in the digital age.

http://teamdigital.com/blog/2009/new-rules-of-advertising-in-the-digital-age/

Posted by David Griffith | 8:23 am on May 14, 2009.

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