With every week that passes it’s proving our theory that social media still has a thing or two to learn from traditional media. We will argue that just as art direction plays a critical role in magazines, a visual strategy is also vital to the success of an online communications plan. Even for the less web-adventurous brands, the Facebook timeline is reason enough to get cracking – 600 million is a big audience that anyone should want to impress.

Recognising that ‘storytelling’ may be lambasted as a buzzword de jour, we cannot undermine the importance of a brand’s ability to tell its story through social media. In this process, whether it be on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest or elsewhere, an integral part of the story is communicated through the visual vocabulary. In the same way that a feature interview needs a photoshoot, your communications plan needs a visual strategy.

Develop an eye for what makes a provocative and engaging image – think like a magazine editor selecting their next cover shot. Images are not to be left as afterthought – a good cover will get you more eyeballs and more sales. When planning any campaign include how images will be used to tell the story.

The difference in social media though is that this is not just an exercise in branding or aesthetics for the graphic designers – it’s a communications tool. For this reason it’s fundamental to understand how SEO is applied to your images. Formatting is also key – we all know that a newspaper requires a different design to women’s glossy, and brands need to realise that Facebook demands different visuals to Pinterest.

What can you do today to power the visual experience of your social media platforms:

1.  Facebook is the scrapbook of your brand’s life. Looking back over the years, there is no such thing as too much information.  Using your archive of images to share your brand’s major milestones, key events or store openings. This will result in higher engagement for your brand. Consider changing your cover image regularly and make it an event.

2.  Instagram gives your brand a voice through the use of images. You’ll be able to demonstrate your brand’s distinctive view of the world while you share things that are interesting to the core target customer.

3.  Pinterest is all about people’s aspirations and how they want to live (when facebook and twitter is about how they actually do live); by using this platform your brand can now connect on this emotional level.  Develop stimulating imagery and original content to create the most engaging boards and promote the lifestyle your brand offers.

A somewhat paradoxical notion, several panels and brands were keen to show how technology – or specifically all the social data that has been accumulating on digital folk – can be used to engineer social serendipity.

As Google’s Chris Messina quite simply put it: we’re experiencing a new generation of apps that “accelerate serendipity”. Users are no longer joining a social network to find connections – the onus is now on the social network to create the connection; Joi Ito, MIT, refers to it as a “marvellous extension of your peripheral vision”.

At SXSW, smartphone application ‘Highlight’ was probably the most widely discussed and used. There was also talk of Glansee, Kismet and Sonar (although Sonar is closed network for existing connections).

These apps transform user data into a form personal currency, so although you may be “selling” your information, you are also buying a better and more tailored experience. For this reason it is becoming more important than ever to curate your own personal brand, ensuring that your activities online are indicative of your interests and intentions. These applications are also giving you an option to influence your offline experiences through online curation.

In terms of user benefits, first and foremost these apps are highly sophisticated networking tools which are leading people to meet other folks who can be beneficial to their social or professional networks. Better than a cocktail party, these apps not only introduce you to others. They also provide you with conversation starters by pinpointing topics of mutual interest.

For marketers, the utility of engineered serendipity is less obvious. Some ideas revolve around a brand creating its own social discovery app or platform, which could be particularly useful for businesses with niche audiences such as sports teams or television shows/channels. This could be a great way to unite like-minded people through their interests and your brand. Alternatively, marketers could work out several ways to leverage the fact that this is happening organically through existing apps – which are binding users through their involvement in their Facebook community.

Targetted social discovery may actually be the most useful (and least creepy) manifestation of this trend. In our experience of using some of these apps we became quickly exhausted by the notifications which advise that one of our colleagues is in the room, or that someone who also likes Mashable, Mumbrella and TechCrunch is nearby. It’s almost as though these apps need to be streamlined to identify unique connections; what if two neurologists are both in a café, and through Highlight they meet and later discover a cure for multiple sclerosis?

Economists have long posed that meta-ideas lead to the “clotting” of creative talent; clusters of brilliance have emerged amongst people when an action has encouraged the spread of ideas (education reforms, public libraries, patent system etc).

Could constructed serendipity be the technological trigger for the next cluster(s) of idea makers? Or from a marketing perspective, is building relationships between your customers by connecting them in the real world of benefit to your brand?

This post appeared in Mumbrella

Last week a couple of the Klicksters were amongst the privileged 20,000 attendees at the 17th South by Southwest Interactive Festival in Austin, Texas. Entering our third year of SXSW awesomeness we had great expectations, band with a selection of 228 conference sessions each day as well as fellow attendees by the likes of Robert Schobel, Guy Kawalski and Frank Abegnale, we certainly weren’t disappointed.

Summarising a festival of learning into one or five blog posts is about as realistic as squeezing Tolstoy’s War and Peace into a single tweet, so we thought we’d just tease you with a few sentences around our top five trends:

1.     Serendipity / Social Discovery

There can be no disputing that ‘serendipity’ was the buzzword of SXSW 2012. More specifically, there was a lot of attention directed to the idea of using social media platforms and data to engineer serendipity and social discovery.  Smartphone app ‘Highlight’ came out ahead of the rest in this area, although there were a number of other apps and talks on the topic. Overall we think that this is a pretty snazzy idea but the real utility of such a tool remains to be seen, especially for businesses (for more insights make sure to read our guest post for Mumbrella)

2.     Co trends

Playing on the old adage that two is better than one, every man and his brand seemed to be co-ing this year; co-working, co-curating, co-founding, co-funding, collaborating… For a lot of existing brands this is the manifestation of an integrated advertising campaign, but for some tech newbies the benefits lie more with collaborative consumption (e.g. Zaarly – a “real time buyer powered market”).

3.     Story Telling

Mentioned over and over again was the importance of story telling in any brand or business. Quite simply, it was proven that the best story wins based on the WIST (Would I Share It) principle that drives new media. From marketing strategy to content curation, the SXSW convincingly argued that this is a skill that needs to be developed for anyone wanting longevity in the social market.

4.     Philanthropy

This year there was a large contingent of presenters and attendees committed to showing how developments in social media and technology can be harnessed to affect positive change all over the world. From disrupting totalitarian political regimes to facilitating meaningful Corporate Social Responsibly programs, it was clear that the widely publicized Kony 2012 campaign by Invisible Children is just one of many philanthropic endeavours benefiting from the growth of social media.

5.     Fitness

In many ways, fitness has always been social; team sports, training groups, personal trainers, etc. But what we’re beginning to see a lot more of is the socialisation of motivation. GymPact App literally makes you pay for skipping out on a gym session, and financially rewards you for a work out when your friends have opted to stay on the couch. SuperBetter creates a social network for injured people, to help them through rehab together. These apps are quite simply (and super effectively) harnessing the emotion and motivation that has always been present in team sports, and using it to incentivise solo endeavours.

As your creative brains may imagine, we have dabbled in just about every creative thinking and brainstorming exercise we can find. On a few occasions, we’ve even made up our own. Every day we are encouraged to contribute to the Klick home of ideas (a secret facebook group on called Ideaology) but sometimes you just need to host a real klick ass session to get the ball rolling.

Here are our top three exercises du jour, which have really helped us to produce some creative chestnuts. Enjoy!

TWO WORD COMBINATIONS

“Professional Creatives” will tell you that a fundamental process in creative ideation is combining two (or more) existing concepts that have nothing to do with one another. Apparently, this is where the genius ideas come from: Carwash + Café = Carwash Café. Swimming + Aerobics = Water Aerobics. Cheese + Cake = Cheese Cake. You get the idea.

Taking this principle, we play a simple game whereby each day the team is given two words, and asked to brainstorm some ideas. Unlike the above examples, the challenge here is usually to think laterally. For instance, last week we looked at WATER and COMPUTER. Instead of just suggesting waterproof computers, ideas were more evolved; i.e. shaded work stations by hotel pools with wifi, for corporate travellers in exotic locations.

STEALING WITH PRIDE

It is said that good artists copy, but great artists steal. “All the big ideas I could ever need are already out there. I just have to find it, & work out how to apply it to my business”, claimed Eric Ryan (Founder Method). The deal here is: find an idea or campaign inspires you, from any industry other than the one you are trying to improve. This can be an ad, an event, a PR stunt – anything that has grabbed your attention. Once identified, see if you can appropriate it to the challenge at hand. For instance, we loved McDonald’s adult (giant) playground in 2011. Could this idea then be appropriated for an online Real Estate promotion, where participants play Monopoly to win a real home or rental?

BLITZ

Pioneered by the very clever Ken Hudson, a Blitz is a brainstorming tool that harnesses the power of speed thinking. Lasting between 2 to 15 minutes, a Blitz is a timed brainstorm that eradicates the main challenges associated with brainstorming; individual starts encourage equal participation from introverted/extroverted personalities, speed eliminates the filtering/over-analysing of ideas, and a group discussion at the end assists with idea collaboration. For some more info on this method visit : http://www.speedthinking.com/blitz/

If you’re not down with the Google+, in a nutshell, it’s Google’s social offering which smoothly integrates its existing online product suite – including Google Places and Maps, Web and Image Search, and YouTube. Connections are allocated to ‘circles’ allowing for topic-focused discussions to be limited/shared among relevant users.

At first glance, Google+ may appear as a hybrid of Twitter and Facebook however it is unique in what it offers brands, now with the introduction of brand pages.

The current user base is quite niche (40 million strong) consisting of mostly the very tech/media savvy – however, how many of these users are actively engaged is a contentious point. FMCG brands (like Coca-Cola) are experiencing low levels of engagement whereas Mashable, Toyota and even The Muppets are performing very well.

In summary…

Pros:
- Great from an SEO perspective as posts are returned in Google search results.
- Google+ offers live, group audio/video chats called ‘Hangouts’, between itself and its audience. Hangouts provide an opportunity for brands to directly engage in discussions with its audience.

Cons:
- For brands, there can only be one admin per page.
- Pages can’t add people to circles until the a user has first circled or mentioned the page in a post.
- No official vanity URLs.
- No official insights.

Recommendation:
Know your audience and do some research. If they have a presence on Google+ then this is your opportunity to engage with them on a less news saturated platform. Be sure to update regularly upon creating the page – don’t let it die. Like other social media platforms, your presence needs to have longevity.

Only until standard consumers catch up, should FMCG brands put efforts towards engaging with the community – unless they form a unique selling point like Pepsi. Alternatively, efforts/resources/money will go to waste.

 Pin It

As someone who is tweeting before the birds most mornings, I realise that I’m probably the wrong Gen Y representative to be having this proverbial whinge, however I do feel a strong sense of kinship with my unfairly burdened peers.

To give you a bit of perspective: I completed my PR degree at UTS – arguably the best communications course in the city – in 2009, and not once do I recall a mention of social media in the curriculum. I believe it’s changed now, but it’s a fair warning that even 24 year olds with a university degree may not have not been trained in this field. In the online community right now, “Social Media Experts” seem to be Gen X for the most part – and this is true of the most experienced social media user in my agency.

In my opinion, the root of the problem is that whilst most business owners and managers have begun to realise the value of social media – they are not actually using it. This is fine, it’s a personal choice and I’ll be the first to admit that social media is not for everyone, but it does make it hard to manage a project or delegate tasks when the area you’re managing is so foreign.

For those that are not on social media, I would like to give you a heads up. Yes, most of us Gen Y kids do consider Google to be a part of our cerebral cortex and the iPhone an extension of our index fingers, but what you (and your business and your clients) need to know is:
- The fastest growing demographic on Facebook is the over 55s
- On Twitter, 53% of Tweeps are over 25 years old, and a third are earning more than $70,000/year
- Less than 14% of Australians on facebook are under 18
- Australians make up for just 0.3% of the world’s population, but are responsible for 11% of all social media traffic

Social media has a higher circulation and readership than any national newspaper. The audience is mature, active and engaged. Are you going to let the youngest junior manage this communications campaign, just because their birth decade begins with a ‘9’?

**This blog post first appeared on the Public Relations Institute of Australia website, written by Margarita Peker

Getting your story placed on a high profile blog is a good thing, right?  Lot’s of eyeballs eyeing your clients story.  One of these high profile blogs, the Huffington Post, is eyeing new readers with it’s Patch network of hyperlocal sites, and a new venture aimed at teenagers.

This news dropped friday around lunch time in North America so it mostly didn’t get a lot of play, but it’s picking up steam on monday as (paid) bloggers are latching on to the HuffPo’s business model: we pay in Whuffie.

There’s an unending supply of fresh graduates and inexperienced writers for whom the opportunity to work with a real editor (probably) is a good payment for 500 words of churn.  I’m not going to go deep into the morals of this business model (it’s short-sighted and exploitative) or into the economics of new media journalism (it’s broken). For the purposes of this blog, I bring it up to call attention to our audience as marketers.

This is who you’re pitching to.  For the unpaid writer, putting out something that will pull a lot of eyes might get them a paid gig writing elsewhere.  Their byline (and personal brand) are going to be all over their stories and the further those stories go, the better.

And for the paid writers, many of whom are working on a churn business model, they need their prose to be quick, snappy and most of all effortless.  Even paid bloggers need to produce a lot, which doesn’t necessarily give them time for thoughtful analysis or even careful reading of a press release.  A snappy paragraph or two might be all they could manage about your product, event or service.   A quick look at “cool tools” sites like “The Awesomer” or Uncrate” gives a sense of their output.

It’s a copy of Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughter House Five that is ad supported. On the cover, or in the pages, a company called WOWIO will insert an “unobtrusive advertisement” to subsidize the cost of the publication.

I see a lot more of this lately: creative placement of ads in heretofore unseen places. It follows behind these clever billboards and these unfortunately placed ads.

It is the result, i’m sure, of millions of dollars worth of agency time and effort. Creative people pouring their brain power into figuring out a new cool place to grab your attention.

I’m sure you’ve seen ads that you find offensive, not in their content, but in their placement. The easy gag here would be, say, an ad for a divorce lawyer outside a wedding chapel, but you get the picture. The question we face in the age of the attention economy is this: what are the sacred spaces? Or more accurately, how can we not be icky?

While an ad on the front of Slaughterhouse 5 for dish network is one thing, an ad for, say, a gun manufacturer would probably be pretty inappropriate.

Most people who refer to themselves as “Social Media Gurus/Experts/Ninjas/etc” talk about engagement, and audience, but they don’t often speak of that old tenet of real estate: location location location. A big part of social media (i would argue the most important) is the ecosystem. Know who you’re talking to and how they talk and (CHIEFLY) what their sacred spaces are. If you don’t know what “Duke Sucks” means, you probably shouldn’t try to get placement on fark.com. “Know thine ecology” should be rule two of social media advertising, right after “content is king”.

First Post T-shirt

For many blogs, the first comment is always “First!”.  Older, more established blogs (which, believe me, is as weird a thing to type as it is to think about) have established policies around “first” posters.  Some get buried, others backdated. Occasionally a blog will go so far as to ban the “firsters” for a 24 hour period simply because the editors find it annoying.  Commenters who post “first” are declaring that they, above all other users, managed to scroll to the bottom of the article and get their user credentials in before anyone else.

That’s all.  For a more detailed examination of this meme, check out the always awesome Know Your Meme, but for the most part just know that it’s mostly considered trolling in these here digital parts.

I bring this up as Google announces it’s latest salvo at Facebook in adding social to it’s search.  My twitter feed this afternoon was splodey with people either asking for an invite or prognosticating on how Google + is destined for the same graveyard as Google Wave and Google Buzz.  But those desiring early invites were interesting in that they weren’t sure what they were in for…they just knew they wanted to be a part of it.

As digital marketers, it behooves us to be aware of these tools, perhaps even register our names on them for future use, but to really invest in them properly takes time.  The equivalent time of reading, digesting and responding thoughtfully to an article before pronouncing “First” (for example).  And nobody wants to be the last person at the party who has to take “Firstname_lastname__1944″ or “clever misspelling” as their handle.  But as we expand beyond the social media gang of three (Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare) and start looking for the next big thing, I’m reminded of Best Buy’s expensive bid in Second Life, a social media network with a diminishing die hard fanbase of animated-penis enthusiasts.

So in a world of QR codes, Quora, Orkut, Minecraft, and important as we figure out how social media fits into the real lives of real people such that we’re not just stuck talking to Robert Scoble and other PR flacks like ourselves.  I mean, I’m happy to drink my own Kool-Aid, but let’s check our feet to see who else is wearing Nikes.