image (judyboo)

So much emphasis has been put on the almighty ‘Like’ these days, that it’s almost become an all out race for brands to get as many ‘Likes’ as possible.  There are even loads of tactics being used by brands such as ‘Like-gating’ for access to content or even incentivizing people with free stuff if they Like a brand’s page. After all, the more people that Like you, the more popular you’re becoming and the more likely they’ll buy from you.  And of course, this clearly means they’re actually advocating you as a brand, correct?

image (owenbrown)

Not necessarily.  The problem these days is that many consider a ‘Like’ as a sign of advocacy.  But if you look at the actual definition of advocacy, it means the ‘active support of a cause or the act of pleading or arguing in favour of something.’  The key word here is active.

It’s not about how many people you can get to like your brand. It’s what you do afterwards to drive engagement & getting fans to do things with you. Yes, a Like is important, but it’s only a first step.   It’s actually the doorway into bigger engagement with your fans.  But it’s just an an opt-in, although a very public one, and a ‘permission to speak, sir!’ It’s a few steps up from opting in to an email newsletter where some brands have given themselves the rights to spam their subscribers to kingdom come.  Nowadays, with a Facebook Like, a fan’s just stating very publicly that they’re allowing a brand to do so through the newsfeed.  And funnily enough, some brands are actually doing just that, seeing it as just another channel to pump messages through.  Pity the brand that pumps 2-for-1 deals and Tuesday specials to their fans because now they feel they have the right to.  Well, they’re ‘our fans’ right?

A Like really only means, “I’m happy for you to appear from time-to-time in my NewsFeed.” But the real hope from is “but if you happen to give me stuff or make me laugh and give me things I can share with my friends, then even better.”

A like is passive.  As mentioned before, advocacy is active. A Like just gets us on the radar of a fan (amidst all the other things she really cares about and which is stealing away her attention).  But what what we’re really aiming for is a lot more active behavior from fans.  We want them to ‘do stuff.’  We want them to discuss, comment, engage with our content.  We want them to share brand experiences with their networks, hopefully influencing the behavior of their friends.  And at the highest level, we’d love for them to defend us when we’re not around to defend our brand.  But this only happens when we’ve managed to give a lot of ourselves to our fans.

A Like is a ‘hello, you seem interesting‘.  Advocacy is “you proved my instincts correct, I will introduce you to my friends.” I guess it’s a bit like dating or even just making a new friend.  Someone can always pique our interests.  We find them interesting.  And we give them opportunities to keep proving us right.  They don’t go straight from the hello, to telling us how wonderful they are and if we fancy checking out their stamp collection.

A Like from a fan is actually a promise from us.  To like them back. And we do that by thinking of what matters to them.  Engaging with them as real people who are sacrificing precious few mintues of their time to spend with us.  Make it meaningful.  It’s no surprise Starbucks have some of the most active fans on Facebook.  For a corporate monolith of a company, you’d think they’d have a hard time getting fans…and then getting them to stay engaged.  The reason is they are equally active back to their fans, they get involved.  And find ways to actively engage with them.

True advocacy starts when we start giving to our fans… being more generous, being engaging & useful.  The more that we do this, the more that they’ll be willing to be real advocates, being more active with our brand.

Yes, get them to like you first.  Be interesting, strike a chord, incentivise…even at times go for ‘Like-gating’ (with caution).  But  remember, the Like is really a promise from us…that we’ll be ‘liking’ our fans back…through engaging conversation, ideas, free (but not frivolously free) stuff, making them look better in front of their friends and anything that will make their lives slightly better or more fun.  Do that right and Likes eventually lead to advocacy.

@Samosaone

I was lucky enough to attend the SxSW conference in Austin this year and one of the key areas of discussion was Gaming, of which Gamification was very hotly debated and even covered as one of the keynote speeches.  Seth Priebatsch, the immensely charismatic 22 year old keynote speaker and founder of SCVNGR, a location based services company you WILL hear about if you haven’t already, believes that Gamification is not only good for business but it can change the world.

Gamification is simply the concept of applying elements of the gaming world and applying them to the real world.  Why gaming?  Well, this $11 Billion+ dollar industry seems to be doing something right.  And we humans, have loved to play games since we were able to think and we spend 3 Billion hours a week online doing just that.  Even animals have been known to play games.  We’d rather do a fun thing than a chore thing. And game designers and marketers seem to have a very similar objective: How do I keep my users / customers excited, engaged and committed? A game is set of challenges with proportional rewards and meaningful purpose.  Gamification adds game mechanics & rewards to non-gaming environments to boostengagement, commitment, advocacy & community (pretty much what marketing seeks to do).  And social & mobile technology today has hugely accelerated this.

Priebatsch feels that Gamification can be used for business and to help solve some of the world’s biggest issues like healthcare, education & global warming.  He even had a cheeky demonstration by getting the 4000 people in the room to play a game to solve a problem together.  Watch his keynote speech if you get a chance.  He says that if the last 10 years was all about establishing the social layer on the world, ie Facebook (it’s won the social war, hands down), then the next 10 years is about adding the gaming layer on top of it.  We’re all connected now, we just need bigger incentives to do more things with each other, with brands and with some of the biggest issues.  And he’s ready to play.

But is it a new concept?  Hardly.  It’s just a new name that seems to have caught on, but the elements involved can be familiar….and it’s a concept finding its way into the heart of marketing. Amex has been doing it for years with their rewards programme where you can progress through their tiers of cards.  Frequent flier miles the same… more flights, more miles…more rewards.  But is it simply a loyalty mechanic?  It goes beyond that. Whereas loyalty mechanics focus much on actions & rewards, gamification adds more with points, challenges, levels, progression mechanics, learnings, social elements…and importantly some meaningful purpose to it all.  Wow… it’s fun to do, I see how I progress, I get rewarded, I see how I do against others, I’m headed somewhere.  Makes sense.

Companies like FourSquare & Gowalla work this way.  Levels, competition, badges.  But Priebatsch believes it’s more than just checkins and badges.  SVNGR actually gets you to ‘do’ things to achieve the levels.  eBay is a great example of a modern-day gamified concept. It works because it’s social and has the accompanying stats to push more interaction & engagement.  Nike+is a brilliant way to take a boring activity like running and make it fun & competitive.  Even Google images…their whole cataloguing system works (at a basic level) through a ‘matching’ game you can play with random players around the world.  In the auto industry, Nissan & Ford have included tamagotchi like components in their eco-cars to encourage better driving.  You can see where this can all go.

So Gamification is probably here to stay, despite the sketchy name and popularity as a new concept.  But is it a new concept?  Probably not.  Just a steroid induced version of loyalty as a result of the socially & technologically enhanced world we’re living in now.  It can definitely be useful for brands.  And it may even change the world.

@Samosaone

In the interest of full disclosure, I should really stop now and state, if you’re expecting great revelations about about the future of Plus and a blueprint for successful brand profiles/pages then stop now. That’s right, go away…you in the red shirt, step away from the computer.

Because, while everyone in the tech community is working themselves into a frenzy about Google’s third attempt at getting social, no one, including the people I’ve spoken with at Google, really has a clue about what brands or businesses will be able to do with Google+. Posts like this one from project manager Christian Oestlien point to a team that understands the importance of brands (hey we’re going to pay for everyone else to play right?) but one that also hasn’t really figured it all out yet.

Christian goes on to state that, “The business experience we are creating should far exceed the consumer profile in terms of its usefulness to businesses. We just ask for your patience while we build it.”

In fact Christian’s continues on, stating that brands will actually be removed from Google+ until they’re ready for them. “In the meantime, we are discouraging businesses from using regular profiles to connect with Google+ users. Our policy team will actively work with profile owners to shut down non-user profiles.” That’s not great news if you’re a brand that wants to get involved at the earliest stages of this endeavor, and there are lots of reasons why you might want to be one of the first.

The good news is that Google set up a form for brands/businesses to register their interest in joining a beta program that’s due to launch in a few weeks. The bad news is that form is now closed and they’ve had thousands of queries and they’re planning on launching things with a few hundred brands.

Of course the lack of bespoke pages hasn’t stopped brands from jumping in with both feet. Early adopter’s like Ford aren’t seeing huge numbers of interactions, but they’re getting lots of attention for being there and treading lightly. Somewhat surprisingly there doesn’t seem to be many other consumer brands on Plus, however media brands such as Mashable, Breaking News, or even MTV have been racing to start posting links to their content.

As I mentioned from the start, I’ve got no great revelations about Google Plus. What I can tell you is that it’s continuing to pick up momentum and that brand pages (or whatever they end up being called) are coming.

If you’re feeling dangerous go ahead and set up a page for your brand of choice, interesting things are already being done with some of the features such as Huddle (Group Chat), Photos, and Hangout (Video chatroom). Now really is a great time to get in there and make something amazing.

Just don’t blame me if you wake up in the morning to find that someone from Google’s deleted your new community. Just ask William Shatner.

Don’t worry, I’ll keep you updated.

Google have created a lovely little book called, ’20 things I learned about browsers and the web’. It’s a bit like one of our very own Little Books, but an interactive way to engage and educate us with those little burning questions we may have about the world wide web and it’s possibilities. Take a moment to have a look, or read some more behind the scenes info here. Good, now you’re all digitised and ready to go.

The merging of the physical and digital worlds has such massive implications for music creation and we’re really only starting to scratch the surface, but apps like this really do have the potential to open up music creation to the masses who’ve never dreamed of creating music.

It should really come as no surprise that the app has come out of the MIT Media Lab, but specifically it’s all the work of Eric Rosenbaum and Jay Silver.

Pick it up from the AppStore or visit singingfingers.com for more info or to start playing with sound.