The prime directive: Be interesting, entertaining, or useful.

Let these words be true north on your social media compass. You need to stop viewers in their tracks, the same way you do it in other media.

In social, some refer to great content as “thumb-stopping” creative because, obviously, the first job is to make scrolling thumbs stop on our brand and not the competition. But as ad veteran and digital expert Andy Blood reminds us, “Your competitive set isn't other advertisers, it's all the content people care about.” Which is basically every cool thing online. “With that in mind,” Andy continues, “you must grab attention by whatever means are most appropriate: being interesting, useful, captivating, different, and distinctive.”

Knowing who your customer is one thing. Understanding communities is another.

Social platforms are communities, not crowds.

Thomas Knoll, community architect at Zappos, spelled out this difference at Austin's SXSW Interactive. Crowds don't have a purpose, he said, but communities do. Crowds show up to get stuff; communities like giving. Where crowds want benefits, people in communities want to belong. Where crowds are powered by inspiration, communities are powered by influence. And, finally, crowds are sustained by service, where communities are sustained by story.

All of which suggests you shouldn't just barge in with some concept, campaign, or tech, however cool it may be. Start with the brand's relationship with that community. In Robin Landa's Nimble, Mark Avnet, a professor of creative tech at VCU Brand Center, suggested, “Always start with people. What do they need? What are they trying to do in their lives? Then look to the brand. What does it have to offer that might help people do whatever it is they're trying to do? Does it have the cultural authority to offer something to that particular audience?”¹

Once we understand what a community's members are talking about, what they value, we then work backwards from there toward an idea.

Start by listening.

Social media people call this listening “monitoring social mentions.”

To understand the communities we'd like to be part of, we do the same things anthropologists do in their work. We immerse ourselves in the culture: by listening, by learning the language, both visual and verbal. What do they care about? What are they sharing? As strategist Gareth Kay said, “Be interested in what people are interested in. Compete for their attention on their terms, not yours.”

It's also useful to study the catch phrases and the images that keep popping up. These popular images and phrases are memes. Originally a biological term ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I prefer Wikipedia's definition: “a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols or practices.”

Memes have become a “cultural nexus” for an entire generation, according to Hulu's Generation Stream study.² “What makes Gen Z's memes special,” writes copywriter Jillian Apatow, “is they communicate complicated, uncomfortable feelings in a lighthearted fashion. Memes can use the levity of humor to discuss weighty issues like mental health, racial equality, and environmental concerns… . They serve as both a form of social currency as well as a short-hand language rich in bizarrely specific insights.”³

It's clear, memes can have more substance than just a cat playing the piano, so make their study part of your social listening. One of the more popular ways to organize your social listening (as well as content scheduling) is Hootsuite, a useful social media management platform.

Map out a conversation strategy.

Planning how your brand's going to engage with customers helps you define what the content is going to be. But your plan can't come out of the blue. It has come from who your brand is: its DNA, from the brand's purpose, why it's here on the planet. These themes will guide the discussions you have and are based on your answer to that question, “Why are we on this social platform?” To get feedback? To create awareness?

The first step in a conversation is starting one. That means having something to say and this is the part many brands get wrong, because “Sale ends Saturday” is not having something to say. Beginning a conversation can start small, say with a casual hand-off of some interesting or useful content, unrelated to your brand but relevant to the community.

Starting small can mean posting a discount or a coupon code. That's what coupons are for—trial—and that's what early conversations between strangers are anyway. (“Can I buy you a cup of coffee?”) But ultimately, to keep the conversation going, we'll need to show up with useful or entertaining content on a regular basis. As you start to bring the brand into the conversation, it's best to lead with its social mission, its purpose, and not a sales pitch. A brand should project a point of view about the world, not just about itself.

Social media strategists also suggest sprinkling content pillars into a conversation. Think of a content pillar as a subset of the main things the brand has to say, like a chapter in the brand book. Each pillar can be composed of different kinds of content, whether it's social posts, blog updates, videos—whatever is interesting and useful.

The agency or brand social media manager will also likely provide a content schedule. Regarding what kinds of content to schedule, many abide by Edward Boches's rule of thirds. Make one-third of your content interesting stuff from outside sources that your community might find useful. Make one-third of the content a celebration of the community's ongoing posts and conversations. And make one-third about your brand.

Post stuff that helps boost a follower's “social currency.”

In Hoopla, his book about Crispin Porter + Bogusky, Warren Berger said social currency is the coolness factor we accrue by sharing great stuff online. “All those selected cultural fragments [we share] become the material people use to produce their own personalized version of who they are—their unique ‘me.'”⁴

Posts that have value as social currency usually have some kind of WOW factor, something that makes a person go, “Cool, thanks for showing that to me.”

In Contagious, Jonah Berger says one way we can increase a user's social currency is to make them feel like an insider. “If people get something not everyone else has, it makes them feel special, unique, high status,” he says. “And because of that, they'll not only like a product or service more, [they'll] tell others about it … because telling others makes them look good. Having insider knowledge is social currency.”⁵

Clearly establish what the user/viewer is getting out of the interaction. What is the payoff?

In some of the interactive engagements we create, we ask consumers to devote some bit of time or effort, whether it's uploading a photo or just typing something. In return, we have to come through with something for them, a payoff—something beautiful, entertaining or useful. “This payoff,” says CP+B's Scott Prindle, “needs to be equal to or greater in value than the time the user has contributed. If it's not, we see very low usage rates.”

It's almost as if we need to start looking at our advertising the way we look at products: What is the benefit of this post? What's the payoff and why would someone feel compelled to share it with others?

“As marketers, we should be changing the mantra from ‘always be closing' to ‘always be helping.'”

—Jonathan Lister, LinkedIn

Speak to the community's influencers.

Influencer marketing used to mean hiring some C-list celebrity to shill a brand on television. Today, it refers exclusively to a type of social media marketing that employs endorsements and product mentions from key community influencers.

According to Jenn Chen on SproutSocial.com, these are people “who have a dedicated social following and are viewed as experts within their niche. Influencer marketing works because of the high amount of trust social influencers have built up with their following, and recommendations from them serve as a form of social proof to a brand's potential customers.”⁶

This kind of social marketing isn't necessary in low-consideration purchases, but you've likely seen it in categories like beauty and make-up. Identifying the key influencers in a community takes social listening and sometimes a lot of research, but there are people inside agencies and brands to help you with this.

Connect people to one another.

“We greatly overvalue connecting people to brands and information, and undervalue connecting people to each other,” wrote Clay Shirky in Cognitive Surplus.

Shirky's observation seems dead-on, considering how often we go online to seek help and advice from our social tribes. We scour Pinterest for decorating suggestions and get tips from friends on Facebook. Sometimes we even rely on a stranger's review to make a serious purchase decision. So, as you sit down to concept on any social assignment, keep in mind this basic human need to connect with one another.

A good example here is one we've already discussed: Lay's potato chips brought soccer fans together by the tens of thousands with “Messi Messages” (see Figure 10.3).

Experiment constantly and build on what works.

As cool as some social advertising is, none of it's gonna end up in a museum. Of all the media we tell stories in, digital content is the most disposable.

Because there's no formula for success on social platforms, the trick is to come up with a whole bunch of different approaches and then measure what works. We experiment and stay in a constant “beta mentality.” By creating lots of stuff and building change and renewal into our conversation strategy, we help keep a brand on its audience's radar.

So, we post all different kinds of content, as if we're lighting a 100 little fires, just to see what catches. Edward Boches's term for this is the “Velcro approach.” Velcro works by creating thousands of small individual attachments that together create a bond, which is how we should market digitally—with a broad range of small engaging interactions that together help build a bond between the customer and the brand.

We do this because there's no guarantee what worked last month will work this month. So, we experiment and play. Using analytics, we find out what's most effective by employing a test-and-learn mindset. Andy Blood's advice: test, learn, iterate, scale.

Leverage the different technologies available in each social platform.

Most of the big social platforms routinely trot out new features. Why not be the first to bake one into a brand concept? Remember when “FaceSwap” was all OMG? Netflix was the first and most visible brand to play with that function. (See #Netflixswap.)

But even the legacy functions can be fun to mess around with. On Facebook, see if you can leverage the data customers put into their profiles. How could you use Facebook's tagging function? How could you use Facebook groups? What if you played with Instagram's filters or stickers? And, obviously, there are hashtags to play with, particularly on Twitter.

Remember, these platforms, at their core, are social networks. Technology dials can be fun to twist, but it's people who subscribe to the content, comment on it publicly, and interact with others. Remember: whatever you make, it must be useful, entertaining, or amazing.

Understand how to use hashtags.

You may not be all that fond of analytics, but your clients are. And anything worth posting is worth measuring.

Analytics are useful not only for you as a creator but they can also help you demonstrate to clients how better creative produces better results. Social platforms index every hashtag and because they aggregate all mentions, you end up with a simple way to track and measure the hashtags you generate.

Hashtags aren't as big a deal on Facebook as they are over on Instagram, where up to 30 are allowed. One expert suggested not making 30 a habit: “Too many hashtags can look spammy, similar to keyword stuffing in web content.” Tagging can also help reach more customers, because Instagram can also be a search engine where users look for products and advice.

TikTok's hashtag ceiling is at 33, but they also suggest keeping it to four to five hashtags. As you add more, they say you run the risk of confusing the algorithm about what your content is. If so, the post may not be categorized optimally, and you'll reach less of your intended audience.

There are a few other basic protocols, such as, don't use tags that #stringthismanywordstogether. Just #besimple. Note also, you can associate individual hashtags with specific products, themes, or conversations. Keep in mind, too, the advice from Chapter 8: the ideal hashtag is an unusual grouping of two or three words that instantly communicate the concept of the campaign.

Bottom line: even if you're not a data geek, learn to use hashtags. Start your education by studying the hashtags you see in interesting online campaigns.

Involve users and let people cocreate.

In social media, it's not just our creativity that counts. As Edward Boches said, “It's not the stories we tell, it's the stories we get others to tell for us.”

Here again, we're talking about user-generated content, which is precisely what we get when we employ Boches's smart process of Do > Invite > Capture > Share (see Chapter 11). For social media campaigns, I recommend it highly.

Be a person, not a corporate bot.

Jeffrey Zeldman, digital expert and author, said it well: “The best way to engage honestly with the marketplace … is to never use the words ‘engage,' ‘honestly' or ‘marketplace.'”

Be authentic.

When writing for social media, remember you're not standing in for the CEO; just be an entertaining, helpful brand representative. As such, you have an agenda, obviously, but if you're candid and up-front about it, people generally give you the benefit of the doubt.

The thing is, in the social spaces, brands are expected to behave in ways they can't in their regular advertising. It's great when the agency can get the client to, you know, chill dawg. It's okay to show the outtakes of a commercial that didn't go so well. Or, if they have a product that's buggy, maybe talk about how they're trying to fix it.

On Twitter, some social media managers prefer to give themselves a first name: “MaryFromHomeDepot.” You don't have to add such a moniker to every post, but it certainly belongs in the profile you make for the brand, or in disclaimers in individual posts if appropriate. Stay human.

“Mobile first. Behavior driven.”

Let's start with the “mobile first” part.

Instagram, TikTok, and Snapchat are almost exclusively mobile-focused social media platforms. Instagram (IG) may be accessible via desktops, but very few users, if any, use IG on anything other than their mobile screens. But at Facebook, Blood told me they don't even use the word screens. His coworkers call the different hardware used to access online content “surfaces.”

Navigating by touch as we do on a mobile surface is so qualitatively different from what we do on laptops, Blood says it's better to have a mobile-first mindset from the very beginning of a project. The whole mobile experience is so different that building from the ground up is better than trying to repurpose or “optimize” assets developed for other media. “The more native your thoughts, the less optimization there needs to be,” says Blood.

Mobile-first thinking means creating ideas expressly for the mobile surface. Ideas take advantage of the native tools and services inside the device and the applications, all of which were developed to be frictionless and adapted to what people are already doing naturally. “We design according to surface,” says Andy. “Therefore, the nuances of user behavior on each particular surface become a key piece to consider when we're framing campaigns.”

Now, as we look at the second part of Andy's maxim—behavior driven—watch how it drives the architecture of campaigns.

Create a content ecosystem.

People have different kinds of behavior when using mobile devices, and Andrew Keller told me understanding this behavior should be part of how you concept for mobile and social.

At Facebook's Creative Shop, where Keller works and teams help brands and agencies develop FB- and IG-specific content, they came up with a framework for picturing a content ecosystem.

“We devised the ‘Pitch, Play, Plunge' framework for Facebook and Instagram to help brands conceive and deploy campaigns that cater to varieties of user behavior,” says Keller. It suggests brands create three kinds of content. Create assets to pitch an idea, create assets that allow people to play with the idea, and create assets that let users plunge into the idea with longer-form content. They also call the framework a “70/20/10” approach, explained here.^*

• PITCH, or immediate consumption content. Seventy percent of our time bent over our phones is about speed. Whatever it is we're looking for—information, diversion—we want it now. For this area, we create short assets that grab attention and get the campaign idea across immediately. Think snackable content, three to six seconds in length. This kind of content is best on Facebook's and Instagram's FEEDS.
• PLAY, or interactive content. Twenty percent of our time on the phone we spend shopping, gaming, and screwing around with apps. Here, we focus on creating interactive content. POLLS work on both platforms, but for Facebook, think LIVE SHOPPING and MESSENGER. And on Instagram, think STORIES and SHOPS.
• PLUNGE, or immersive content. Ten percent of user time is generally spent on long-form content or experiences. Here, we create immersive assets that enable people to go in-depth into a campaign idea. This often means highlighting a brand's most captivating stories (usually the longer, more emotional ones) and, for these, we lean toward in-stream and Facebook WATCH.^**

Keller says a three-part mixed-assets campaign approach works best—a combination of short duration ads, interactive ads, and longer, more immersive ads. Facebook is a data-driven company, and this framework is more than just theory. Keller said, “When we tested ideas that employed all three parts in a single campaign, it resulted in a bigger brand lift.”

For Keller, having more content in more places isn't new ground. To produce the brilliant campaigns his teams did at Crispin (like truth^® and the introduction of Mini automobiles in the US) “we needed multiple assets to deliver the campaign, so it sort of triangulated the idea for audiences.”

Arby's on TikTok.

It started when a young guy, the soon-to-be-famous John Casterline, posted a video on TikTok showing a used flatscreen TV he'd just purchased for 25 bucks. But the TV displayed only an Arby's menu and nothing else.

Fallon's social teams were listening and posted Arby's quick reply on TikTok: “We've been looking for this!”

Swan described the campaign that followed as improv. “When that kid posted about how his new TV showed only an Arby's menu, we just played along. We called it the ‘Arby's TV Cinematic Universe'” (Figure 12.2).

Casterline declined to give Arby's “their TV” back and a few days later, in the sky over his house, a plane appeared towing a huge banner: “We want our TV back.” By now, more TikTok users caught wind of this “battle” and the trend took off. Users contributed new storylines like the “discovery” of similar frozen TVs showing Arby's menus, but in other used electronics, even in the console screen of a car.

Even Casterline's local Arby's changed its sign: “We want our TV back.” This banter continued for some time and culminated in Arby's shipping Casterline a new flatscreen. When the kid finally showed off his new TV on TikTok, millions of followers saw the screen's announcement about “The $5 Missing Menu Meal.” To get this new combo at a discount, customers just had to mosey on up to the counter and say, “I have your TV.”

Neither the brand or agency ever talked with the Casterline directly because it would've made the whole thing “sponsored” and killed the authenticity. Swan also pointed out that a less digitally savvy company might have prematurely announced a big happy gift to the kid: “Like, ‘Yay! Free Arby's coupons!' But that would have ended it.” A good thing, too, considering that by the time it did end (and the internet always moves on), news coverage had helped deliver one billion PR impressions and Arby's grew its following on TikTok by 88 percent.

Two Instagram examples.^*

Instagram's platform comes with a ton of tools that enable brands to do more than just post a product and a price.

Bacardi Rum, for example, did a hack on Instagram's Stories to create a bit of digital candy they called “Instant DJ” (Figure 12.3, left). The musical approach was perfect given the brand and its category (aka, party-juice). On screen you saw a point of view (POV) of a DJ's two-record set and you could use your thumbs on the Bacardi-branded discs to spin and scratch tunes. Bacardi followed that with another fun Insta-hack called “Instant Jams.” Both are viewable on YouTube.

A more recent Instagram campaign, and a favorite of the industry, is from adam&eveDDB in London. To combat online bullying, the nonprofit Cybersmile Foundation teamed with fitness and lifestyle influencer, Chessie King, to host a live Instagram story.

In her opening video, Chessie proudly posed in her underwear, saying this was her way of announcing, “I accept my body” (Figure 12.3, center). And then the team waited for the first troll to bite. They didn't have to wait long.

“She's so fatty.”

The team then quickly retouched a photo of Chessie, creepily thinning her sides, and posted the “improvement.” But Insta-haters kept weighing in: “Girls shouldn't lift weights. Her arms are way too big.” “You can't even fill out that sports bra.” “Why mustaches for brows?” The retouching went on and on, culminating in a shockingly distorted video of a Chessie-Thing waving at the camera (Figure 12.3, right). At the end of the video, type quietly appeared: “#TrollingIsUgly. Cyberbullying can cause severe physical and mental illness. For help, visit cybersmile.org.”

Two Facebook examples.

Ogilvy's office in Frankfurt was tasked with convincing Germans they don't have to fly to far-away countries to take in beautiful scenery. Not when they could travel somewhere equally beautiful on DB German railways.

Ogilvy activated the campaign in print and outdoor by showing beautiful international travel destinations side-by-side with similarly beautiful locations in Germany. The only real difference was the price it took to get there.

But when they took the campaign onto Facebook, they used data and technology to turn this simple visual idea into a real-time social-media price comparison.

Using Facebook data, they sent this same visual pairing to travel enthusiasts who'd shown interest in going to the Grand Canyon, but unlike the print and outdoor, the posts contained the exact costs of travel for each recipient (Figure 12.4).

Geotargeting pinpointed a user's actual location in Germany and the airport closest to him or her, while another algorithm looked up the destination's closest airport—in this case, Phoenix's Sky Harbor Airport. This data was then sent to a search engine that identified the cheapest flight price, all which showed up on the user's Facebook feed in real time. This whole mini-search engine was completely automated and offered a globe's worth of destinations, customized for each user.

In another Facebook campaign, Auckland agency Colenso used Facebook's friends in a campaign for mobile provider, Skinny. Given the size of the country, Colesno correctly figured “everyone knows someone who knows someone,” and created the Cannes-winning concept called “Friend-vertising.”

“We cast Skinny's customers from all over our little country and made them each the star of their own campaign,” an agency representative explained. They filmed them all in hundreds of commercials, every spot filmed in exactly the same sets and locations, with every Friend reading the same script (Figure 12.5, left):

Hi friend, and/or family member. Did you know recommendations from friends or family members are more effective than regular ads? Anyway, let's talk about Skinny and mobile. As a Kiwi brand, Skinny covers 98 percent of the places we work and/or live, and have literally heaps of happy customers like me … and them. [Camera pans to film other cast members of the campaign.] So, join me, friend-slash-family member. And get the Skinny. [Super comes up:] Join Alice on Skinny with Friend-vertising.

Colenso then shared Skinny's media budget with all the featured Friends so they could share their commercials with all their Facebook contacts. Each post also included discount codes based on the “star's” name. Meanwhile over on Instagram, every cast member got their own paid post to share (Figure 12.5, right). Skinny's campaign reached 98 percent of the country.

Some final thoughts.

There is so much more social marketing we could talk about, considering what great campaigns are also happening on Twitter, Pinterest, and YouTube. But the forest called and said it wants its paper back. So, we'll close here with some comments on why you should become a social media expert.

The main reason? Clients love social media. It costs them much less than traditional media. It enables them to customize executions for individual customers. And they can track which posts work, how well they work, and do it all in real time.

In its early years, social media was viewed as an add-on to traditional campaigns. But the examples you've just read about should demonstrate social media can be the engine that powers campaigns in traditional media. Yet, at many agencies, social is left for the juniors to handle. I can partly understand this, considering how many clients use social only to post price-item stuff, but as we've seen, it can be so much more. So, if you find yourself in a job where they let juniors handle the social, swing for the fences.

If you can create great content for social media, you'll likely always have a job. Brands can't get enough of this stuff. In fact, to keep up with the demand for enough content to maintain a steady social media presence, some brands are building in-house production studios. In fact, the toy brand Nerf recently hired the industry's first “chief TikTok officer.” There are jobs out there, people. Just sayin'.