Piaras Kelly PR - Public Relations in Ireland

What I hate about most organisations’ approach to social networks is that they fundamentally overlook how this medium is actually used by consumers and invariably their presence ends up as a ghost town.

I’ve rabbited on for some time now that the majority of communication on social networks is similar to that of SMS on mobile phones. Invariably if your brand has nothing to talk about, then why will social network users bother to engage you. The number of friends your corporate profile has isn’t a proper metric. I can sit at my desk all day and click add friend, so it’s hardly a measure of success. Any surprise that most corporate blogs suck? Hardly. Once Irish marketers get over the initial hype of digital marketing, they’re going to share the same concerns as some of their peers in the States.

A quick and easy win that most organisations overlook is photos on the likes of Facebook and Bebo. I was pleasantly shocked to read that Facebook is now the biggest photo sharing website in the world now. How can brands tap into this trend? If you have a corporate profile to drive events, why don’t you take photos and tag attendees in the pictures? The statistics speak for themselves, more people than ever are uploading pictures to Facebook because we like chatting about pictures from parties, events, special moments in our lives, etc.

So how do companies go on to distinguish themselves online? Surely everyone could just start taking photos and start tagging people in them? One trend that is worth exploiting is personalisation. Despite the popular myth, most bloggers or social network users aren’t that technical. We do like online services though which we can use to pimp our space. Two great implementations of this are Kodak’s Make Me Super viral campaign or Pixelate’s Twitter profile photo editor. Both allow users of the service to easily edit photos of themselves. By adding value for consumers (this doesn’t mean ’star in my ad’), brands can are able to leverage their presence on social networks by being relevant to the audience.

By understanding user behaviour, brands can tap into social networks in a way that’s relevant to the audience that they want to connect with. Unfortunately most organisations would like to force their model of engagement onto users and try to force them to adapt. It’s a bit like saying that the rules of American Football should suddenly apply in a soccer match. The participants won’t pay any attention to you and just carry on as they mean to.