Page 124 - Social Media Marketing

c h a p t e r 4 : ╇ T he S ocial B usiness E cosystem╇ ■The NCAA audience is obviously part of Coke’s target, and the experience
of being a fan is relevant to that audience segment. Rather than serving its own
immediate goals—advertising and selling Coca-Cola products—the Department of
Fannovation exists for the benefit of fans. This goes a long way toward demonstrat-
ing Coke’s preference for participation in social sites rather than one-off “come to us”
branded microsites.

One final note on Coke’s Department of Fannovation campaign: It ended prop-
erly, because it was set up properly. One of the mistakes that social media marketers
make is viewing “communities” as “campaigns.” They aren’t. Communities encour-
age relationships, and in matters of relationships no one likes to get dumped. When a
community is created, there is an expectation that the community, if it becomes active,
will be supported into the future. In the case of Fannovation, it was a time-bound idea:
NCAA and March Madness. This was clearly set up front, so that when the campaign
ran its course the “end” was expected. It’s important to spend as much time thinking
about how a social effort will end as it is in planning how it will get started.
102 Take a tip from Coke, Starbucks, Dell, and dozens of other brands: Approach
the Social Web as a consumer and understand how you relate to it in that context.
What do you find useful? Why are you using Facebook? What do you like about your
business blog or internal company intranet? What utility do these provide and why are
they useful to you? Apply the answers to these questions to the design of your social
programs, and let them guide your participation in the online communities that the
people you are interested in choose to spend their time.

The Social Ecosystem

The social ecosystem, taken as a whole, provides three fundamental opportunities for
understanding and leveraging the behaviors associated with collaborative interaction.
These opportunities—the social graph, social applications, and social platforms—are
shown in Figure€4.7.

The social graph—the connective elements that link profiles and indicate activi-
ties through status updates and the like—provide a framework for understanding who
is related to whom, who is influential, where to look for potential advocates, and what is
happening right now. This is important for participants: The social graph and the appli-
cations that rely on it facilitate friending, for example, and the sharing of content and
experiences throughout a social network.

Behind the scenes, the social graph supports the programming techniques that
allow social applications to discover relationships and to navigate the links that define
them, suggesting potential friends or helping to spot influencers and generally provid-
ing an indication as to how participants in a social network are connected to each
other and what they are sharing between themselves.