Social Media Strategy and Branding: Modern Brand Is Created Through Crowdsourcing

Creating a modern, pre-eminent brand in our New Media Era is done through crowdsourcing by digital natives through user-generated content. Crowdsourcing is the act of a digital media follower ("a friend", "a follower"), in spreading content. This act was traditionally done by a brand employee or contractor. In New Media, followers communicate the content that the follower finds interesting and engaging. It is communicated to a friend, using a social media platform, like Facebook.

The "followers" and "friends" are digital natives. Digital natives are a demographic group usually between ages of 11-30. They have been brought up on digital technology. They enjoy and are comfortable communicating with their friends digitally, most notably through platforms, like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube.

User-generated content is the material that the Natives share with their friends. The content is created in the form of posts, blogging, podcasts and vblogs, videos, photos, mobile phone video, and wikis. Social media has reconstructed the paradigm on which modern marketing is constructed. Marketing has changed from a "push" situation to a "pull" framework because of social media.

In Old Media times, an organization, created products, and pushed those products upon the public. One way advertising campaigns were constructed to brand the product. In our new era, it is a "pull" paradigm. In this new paradigm, brands and consumers have a two-way conversation. The products take on an almost human dimension. A brand and a customer become almost like human friends. The general public doesn't believe the claims of Old Media advertising. People do believe the recommendations of their "friends". Modern consumers "Pull", from store shelves those brands that they want to buy---the ones that are their friends. The ones that their friends have recommended. The benchmark for modern social media branding are the Ford Fiesta (The Fiesta Movement), and the Obama Presidential Campaign.

The nature of our era creates an interesting situation. This situation has to be understood by a modern marketer in order to create strong, modern brands in a Social Media Era. A company legally owns the brand. If a brand is to be created, in this new era, the brand's followers actually take ownership and develop the brand. Followers "pull" the brand and develop it. Followers create the actual brand in New Media branding.

The Fiesta automobile and Barack Obama campaign created world-class brands through crowdsourcing. In both cases, world-class brands were created, and created very quickly, when followers took engaging material from a Facebook Page and shared this content with their physical friends in the form of posts, text, video, and blogs. At the center of crowdsourcing, and the thing that makes it powerful as a branding device is that brand is created by friends recommending products to their friends. This is how brand is created in New Media.

To understand why crowdsourcing is such a powerful vehicle, you have to understand The Consumer Decision Journey, a concept created by McKinsey & Co. McKinsey discovered that a purchasing decision is the end of a long journey of many touchpoints in which the consumer is engaged with the brand over many experiences. Modern brand is created when friends recommend to friends products through the material they create in blogs, posts, video, and texts. This brand awareness development is critical in the selling of products.

McKinsey, through its Consumer Decision Journey, discovered that friend recommendation makes a product three times as likely to be purchased. Crowdsourcing creates the brand awareness that creates world-class brands. The brand provides the use of a platform. The platform is a hub, a place where followers can go to grab content. This can be a website or a Facebook Page. The content can either be created by the followers themselves, or provided by the brand. In crowdsourcing, the content is then sent to friends from friends.

Ford's Fiesta campaign, The Fiesta Movement, revolved around Digital Natives. Ford did not spend a nickel on conventional advertising. At the end of the six month social media branding campaign, the Fiesta had 38% brand awareness among its target group, and it sold 11,000 units in its first month of availability, in a tough year for auto sales.

In Barack Obama's case, he went from being a virtual unknown, to winning the Presidency. Much of the credit for the success of his campaign was his brilliant use of social media. It was this campaign that communicated to business just how important social media is in creating brand.

Dean Hambleton

dnhammbleton@gmail.com

Social Media creates strong, modern brands. These brands are created by the brands themselves, through crowdsourcing. This article explains what crowdsourcing is and how it works it creating strong brands. The thing that I learned most in this article is that in social media brands, to create a great one, a brand has to give ownership over to its followers. I hope that this article helps you. I can be of help to your organization, I hope that will contact me at:

dnhambleton@gmail.com

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The Spawning of Modern Media

There is a term some use that may not be so accurate. Many people use the term "social media" to describe using the internet for business. This term is used wrong quite often and should be clarified. There are social networking sites and there are social media outlets. New Media or Modern Media is the complete optimization of the web and all its outlets for the betterment of your business. Blogging, micro-blogging, tweeting, facebooking, bookmarking, uploading, friending, following and myspaceing have become verbs in the English language, for all intensive purposes. Social Networking should be somewhere around 30-35% of your new, or modern media campaign. These things all work hand in hand these days, so we need to make the terms clear. Let's break down the terms by definition:

Media - The means of communication that reach large numbers of people

Social - Seeking or enjoying the companionship of others.

Modern - Contemporary or up-to-date.

So, if social media is seeking the companionship of others through the means of communications that reach large numbers or people, then modern media is the contemporary or up to date means of reaching large numbers of people. Again part of a modern media campaign has to have social networking as a portion of the plan as a whole.

In this scope of definition we would now be able to say that social media would mean seeking friendship and modern media would mean reaching the masses in the most up to date fashion. Is this correct? Good, now we are on the same page. Either phrase you use is designed to relay the want to communicate. Communication, by definition means the exchange of thoughts, messages, or information, as by speech, signals, writing, or behavior. So, if I wanted to exchange thoughts and needs as a person I would want to do so socially to befriend people. Along the same lines, if I wanted to communicate for business I would want to do so in the most up to date contemporary fashion possible,if I were thinking properly.

Though, as a business you want to make friends along the way, the goal is to make money and provide jobs. With this in mind I think that the old forms of "putting food on the table" are done in the following ways, traditionally. You either hunt or farm, with the final goal of harvesting food. Let's break those terms down in definition form:

Farm - To cultivate.

Harvest - The result or consequence of an activity.

Hunt - The constant pursuit of something.

Now being that this is 2010 and we all have to be able to do many things at the same time I would think of growing my business in such a way:

I have clients now, this is a great thing. I have to farm or cultivate them into raving fans to get referrals and make more money. As I am doing this, because it takes a long time to do, I have to be hunting for new clients. This means I have to be in a constant pursuit of them with the goal of attaining new accounts or assets. Either way you look at this it can be done on the internet, right? So, if I am a social media person I want to meet, pre-sort and find a new companion or friend with the final goal in mind of taking the relationship from the internet to real life. If I am a business, or modern media user, I would want to set appointments or make deals, either way it involves taking the connections online and bringing them into real life.

Now in order for me to begin doing any of this I have to create a profile and set my image. My image is the one thing I control alone. I can make myself look anyway I want to, but in the end everyone will find out if I do everything correctly and make the internet a real place. Make sense? So now we need to look at the difference between identity and brand, because these are the words most used in "social media". By definition:

Identity - The collective aspect of the set of characteristics by which a thing is definitively recognizable or known.

Brand - a particular product or a characteristic that serves to identify a particular product.

So, this would tell me that my identity is determined by others and my brand is a small piece of the overall picture. In other words, I can brand anything that exists in my identity. But, if I think I am the color blue and everyone else thinks I am the color red, I am going to waste a ton of time branding my red pencils that I sell instead of branding the blue ones. See? More basic explanation, The things that come into mind for me on these words are the following:

Identity, public identity, or what others identify me with and vice versa

Brand, in the old days was a burned logo on the ass of a cow to let others know it was mine.

So we have to first measure where we are in our identity stages and see what the perception of my company is currently. Then we have to define how we want to be viewed in order to create a brand. This means we need to constantly gather data to make the best choices on the way we are seen. Date is defined as:

Data-- Factual information, especially information organized for analysis or used to reason or make decisions.

Well, we want the information from the people that are saying things about us and creating our identity and helping or hurting our brand name so we need to make relationships with them to get info. Relationship is defined as:

Relationship-- the state of being connected.

So we now know that Modern Media is the most up to date ways of reaching the masses to communicate (exchange thoughts) and build a relationship (be connected) with my current and prospective clients in order to harvest the rewards of my hunting and farming activities (actions to produce a result) that are in coordination with my brand (products and characteristics) which will enhance my identity (perception of me). In other words, using "social media" to build a business is stupid. Using Modern Media properly is the best way to build a brand, identity, product line, relationships, gather data on my crops and grow revenue.

Lets not forget that little word called class, defined as:

Class - High quality, integrity, status, or style

Executing your social or modern media campaign needs to be done with class. This is a must. The world of social and modern media is not a forgiving one when you break the rules of etiquette. Some of the websites will just simply ban you for life from their communities if you mess up, so it is very important to stay current with your site guidelines.

But in the end, you must just simply execute your plan and follow the rules; this is a growing market and needs to be tapped, by every business. Execution is defined as the following two things:

1. To put into effect; carry out, to perform or carry out what is required

2. To put to death

Which one describes what you are doing with your campaign? Are you using it and making headway daily or are you not using it, or using it wrong, and putting it to death? The other word that comes to mind is the word, as John Madden says it "BOOM" which means, by definition:

Boom- To progress, grow, or flourish vigorously, as a business

By Eric Rice

President

Boom Media, the first and only true New Media Agency, San Diego Social Media

http://www.mymediaboom.net

About Boom Media
Eric Rice and Boom Media, Inc. is a new media optimization firm based in San Diego, California. New Media is the culmination of all online assets (such as social networking, blogs, micro-blogs, bookmarking and video sites) and tactics that can be used to drive revenue and identity for businesses. With a proven track record for success, Boom Media's team delivers results with innovative and measurable campaigns. Learn more at http://www.mymediaboom.net

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