Social Currency: the Warm 'n Fuzzies

People don’t want to talk to brands. They don’t want to hear about your stories, your personality, or how you plan to ‘engage’ with customers.

That being said, when it comes to social media, people still tend to share branded content. Why? Strap on your empathy helmets chaps, let's investigate.

Marketers often misattribute this question to “brand conversations”. They will post-rationalise that people share because they are engaged with the brand. Problem is, ‘engagement’ on social media is primarily measured through likes and shares, which actually don’t measure engagement at all. 

As Ehrenberg-Bass have demonstrated, even the top 10 most ‘liked’ brands on Facebook have a mere 0.5% engagement rate. This means, after the initial ‘like’, consumers show almost no further interaction with the brand.

And that initial ‘like’ is often only to secure deals, promotions, or to communicate some minute and arbitrary personality characteristic by slapping on yet another label in the quest to define our identity (as social media is the perfect platform to heedlessly quantify ourselves).

Sharing has almost nothing to do with the brand itself and is entirely dependant on the – and I shudder to use this word with all its connotations – content.

People derive value from sharing because we feel as though the content encapsulates a popular idea or value that validates our intelligence, status or social connectedness. In one way or another, it makes us feel ‘in the know’.

Just check out this new campaign from Ford. I mean prank videos are popular, right? Who doesn’t like prank videos? Guys? Hello? Please like me.

We crave validation and affirmation, and sharing content that is associated with popular shit is a good way to receive it (where are the branded cat videos?)

Brands can benefit by acknowledging consumers who are privy to such affirmation (i.e. everyone). Content that communicates something that people already know (or what they can later justify as previously knowing) and validating them for knowing it, is a good initial strategy to achieve reach.

Combine this with a popular idea of how people utilise such knowledge to perform a particular action, and bam, you’ve created an association between brand and behaviour.

Trendy social media strategies include the “tag a mate” style campaigns. These tend to be memorable, have good branding, and achieve a fairly good reach.

But where is the talk of the brand itself? Their vision? Their story? What they stand for?

Nowhere, that’s where, because it’s irrelevant. It’s superfluous wankery. It’s the wet dreams of a muppet who calls himself ‘Chief Inspiration Officer’. The product is shown, an association made, and a sharing behaviour incited. Reach.

So when it comes to social media, here’s the insight (if it could even be called such): We don’t talk to brands. We talk to people who may like us. We don’t talk about brands. We talk about ideas, values, and causes that can potentially make us popular by rewarding us with that sweet, sweet intangible Internet currency.

In this sense, social media strategy is really no different from traditional media strategy, and should under no circumstance be treated as such. It all boils down to strong creative work, validation through status or connectedness, mnemonic associations, and good branding.

Even the social currency is the same: the ever-intangible warm and fuzzies.

a.ce