a.k.a Part Three of ‘Selling social media in India’.

Recently, I started using the first part of Harry Potter (The Sorcerer’s Stone) as the bed time reading material for my about-to-be-7 son. Before Harry Potter happened, I was telling him stories, on my own. Most of them were preposterous, if I may call it that.

What else would you call a story about water conservation, which had characters named Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrel (from Susanna Clarke’s book with the same name, about 2 magicians…yes, much like Nolan’s The Prestige, but vastly different too!) and also had an arch-nemesis named Lex Luthor?

The character names was just a facade – I was merely having fun and assimilating everything I see and read everyday into a 6-7 year old’s bed time story. Remember…I told you that the story was about water conservation! The son was forgetting to close the wash basin taps properly after washing his hands!

The 2nd part of the story telling session was to leave him with a clue. This clue has to be tantalizing, so that, when I wake him up (make it, ‘try to wake him up’) in the morning at 6:30 am, I lose as little patience as possible. Have you tried waking up a 6-7 year old at that hour? If yes, you know what I’m talking about. It is an exhaustive task – emotionally (‘cos you trying to wake a child at an adult hour, for school) and physically (the sheer time you spend cajoling a sleeping child while he shows zero signs of caring for you is no joke). The clue helps, in this case. All I do is whisper in his ear, ‘What is the clue?’ or some such thing sweetly. The son, mostly – except the odd, really bad morning – springs up by chanting the clue, in full excitement!

Now, why am I talking about my son and his bed time reading habits in this blog? I always have a reason and you know that by now.

I was going through random Facebook pages recently and found that some of them have amassed 10K and 20K fans in ridiculously short spans of time…one of them had gained (is that even the right word here?) 10K+ fans in a matter of 12 days. An airline brand even sent a press release recently to celebrate reaching some number of fans in their Facebook  community! The power of advertising! The point, but, was that, the kind of updates (for the sake of ‘engagement’) in those communities were completely random and pointless! If they did have a point that I may be ignorant of, hats off to the agency/client.

In a couple of meetings recently with prospective clients, I found that I have reached the 3rd level of selling social media in India (read the first 2 here and here). And, it is this. The clients are aware of building communities online. They have even been quoted, with no community building/investing on social media experience, in business and marketing publications!! They are fully aware, mostly from their advertising agencies, on how any brand with money can advertize and ‘acquire’ fans for their own communities.

So, how do I hook their attention these days? Two ways – one, talk of owned media as something that is implied, they know it well, but they don’t know it fully, yet. Why?. Because, two, I talk about the story telling aspect of community management.

The former was about focusing on earned media – about what people are talking about the brand, its competitors and the industry anywhere on the net. And what the brand can do about it and convert opportunities out of it. That works, but it is also a function of a full-fledged and process-driven online monitoring system. First door opened.

The latter is about treating them like my son. Literally. This is where PR’s experience helps in digital. As PR professionals, we are supposed to be skilled story tellers. Let us not go into a debate on how the stories are fabricated – I’m referring to legitimate stories, spun skillfully, out of meaningful and truthful client aspects. In a community management scenario online, it helps that we have a larger story for our fans and use those small updates to build on to a larger story. These updates are not ad-hoc updates cooked out every morning/now and then for the sake of sharing something online. That is one way, of course, but is perhaps not the most sustainable way.

The larger story is the equivalent of ‘water conservation’ in my son’s case. If the agency says that the purpose of creating a fan community online is to ‘engage with them’, sorry…wrong answer. Engagement is not the purpose, it is merely the function of a conversational medium. The question is, ‘What do you engage fans with?’ and ‘What would it amount to, say, in 6 months…or 12 months hence?’.

In both cases, you need to have a larger story arc and work towards completing the story through those small status updates, tweets or other features present in those tools/sites. The PR skill comes to the fore in marrying this story with a real business need, so that, at the end of a review period, you show a client how much you have moved the needle towards helping that business need, with your story nuggets.

The ‘clue’ part of my story telling session above comes into play to create interesting nuggets consistently. It is in the way the story is told and how you leave fans with something that has them coming back to your community again and again. Just because you have 10K+ people ‘liking’ your Facebook community, it does not mean you own them. Heck, there are people who are peddling lower ‘acquisition costs’ for likes on Facebook!! As if the client ‘owns’ those fans and every word from the client is held on by those ‘fans’ like it is from the Bible. Yeah…right!

Does paid media even figure here? Yes, it does, but only for building relevant fan base in the first place. Engagement is a fickle thing when you have paltry number of fans, so it helps that you advertise and ‘acquire’ fans, but do so based on the right target audience. So, paid media is just the beginning. How you sustain and use that community towards your brand’s benefit is the main story. And that comes through creative and intelligent use of content – in other words, content remains the king.

PS: You may well ask, ‘Hey, why are you talking generally? Show us how you did all this with your clients!’. Yes, you may. But you know what? As PR professionals, we know that a client needs to gain PR mileage from this effort, not the agency. So, we’d rather let our clients talk about it as their effort. I can share them with you when we meet over a cup of coffee.

Photo courtesy: SEOPblog via Flickr.

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