The 4 Cs of Social Media

Social Media, Auckland, New Zealand. Social Media NZ, Social Media Club
Be it New York or New Zealand, digital or direct, hand-held or ambient, traditional or social... primarily, all media are means of communication.

What's different about social media is owing to its speed & size, it's not as easy to define its basic framework. To understand SM at a glance, I've drawn a simple sketch to illustrate what lies at its core.

4 Cs of Social Media - the basic framework

Collaboration

Collaboration is the spirit of social media. Call it participation, sharing or engagement, it's what puts the "social" in social media. Without sounding too psycho-babble, it's the behavioural glue that builds & binds online networks. It actually works on the oldest of truisms - Man is a social animal... and modern man, an attention-loving beast!


Content

Content is King. And quality content is organic ranking (even without those SEOs!) Clearly, we're living in an Information Age, where everything is media and everyone is a media channel. As a result, user-generated content is popping up everywhere at never-before rates - created by people like you & me. Consume it. Create it. Share it. Love it. Hate it. Enjoy it. Just don't try keeping pace with it.

Sample this UGC nugget - 24 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube every 60 seconds - that's 1 day of content for every 1 minute!

Conversation

Conversation is social media in action. Without it, social media wouldn't be. Content (good or bad) leads to an opinion and when two or more opinions concur (or collide), it strikes (or sparks) a conversation.

What's more, opinions are like arseholes. Everyone's got at least one:) (anyway, back to work!) Feeds, updates, tweets, retweets, comments, likes, share bars, embed codes, reviews, ratings, links - are the lifeblood of conversation.

And the truth is, people share things they like with their family, friends,  fans, followers - at different places, at different times, in different ways. The true test of good content lies in its talkability = the ability to generate WOM by jumping across social networks and even, media platforms. That in a nutshell, is how content goes viral and it's truly social art when it does.

Community

Community creation is the whole point of social media. A direct consequence of collaboration, communities form when people with a common point of interest come together on social networks. It is the interaction within & across communities that creates connections, and it is here the SM strategy comes into effect.

The Quality of the Connection is where it's at.

The end goal of all business is profit creation via customer generation.

For most companies, CRM, corporate communications/ PR, advertising & marketing and direct sales is where social media comes in. SM allows a forum to connect with existing customers (and reach out to potential ones) - closer, faster and easier than ever before.

Marketers considering social media in the mix may ask "What separates one SM initiative from the other?" Answer: The quality of the connection with the community = volume, frequency and depth of interaction. Before setting up a corporate feed, decision-makers and stakeholders need to devise a carefully thought out SM strategy factoring in things like:

• Could it result in better customer service?
• Could it result in better brand equity?
• Could it lead to a better end experience for the consumer?
• Could it increase customer satisfaction?
• How open and transparent should we be?
• What's our contingency plan in case shit hits the fan?
• Who looks after SM - who takes the calls & who mans the decks? 
• Which are the right SM tools for our business?
• Do we have the systems to channel feedback into the product?
• What other media should we integrate with for best results?
• How do we measure ROI?

Social Media is for doers. It is on-going.

The trick is to never stop asking questions and the answers can only be found by doing. While Just Do It, Listen & Learn, Keep it Real, Explore & Experiment, Measure & Monitor, Filter and Integrate are handy mantras, here are 3 things to remember:

1. You don't control the conversation, you facilitate it
2. Your community is your brand (and key business driver)
3. On-going community management is the way to success

Social Media's star on the rise in NZ

A recent study of Kiwis participating in social networks drew up encouraging statistics. Here's a snapshot of Nielsen's 2010 Social Media Report.

With Facebook crossing the 500 million user milestone (that's one in 14 humans) last week, SM has only just begun. Might as well get social with it.
Social Media, Auckland, New Zealand. Social Media NZ, Social Media Club