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Oct 28 2009
Digital Marketing

3 Ways To Use Curiosity To Convert Fans Into Activists

By: Dave McNamara  |   Follow me on Twitter: @dav3jmac  |  

A Kitten's Curiosity

By Wyatt Wood

Originating from the human desire to share, its obvious that the success of social media is the ability to connect users. A network’s success is determined by how easy it is to connect and share. For example compare Twitter vs Plurk, Facebook vs MySpace, Bing vs Google (perform your own comparison).

Success can be a two-edged sword, if focusing on the wrong metrics can leave the message stale, using return on influence can provide an accurate measurement of message activists.

“Influence isn’t about having the best “thing.” It’s about reaching the right people, with an engagement that delivers value, offering your audience a meaningful connection to your brand. Having great content isn’t enough if you don’t have, don’t know, or don’t understand the audience(s) you want to reach and how they want to engage with you.” (Jen Houston)

Micah Baldwin defined influence as “influence is one person influencing one person about one thing” during his presentation at Gnomedex 9.0.

How to be Awesome – Gnomedex

View more presentations from micahb.

So how do you convert curiosity to increase your influence? Here are 3 simple steps to strengthen your influence within your network:

  1. Use strategic reciprocity to entice your network into participation. While value differs between users there is always purpose that defines an engaged user. TGI Friday’s successfully converted customers and potential customers with their campaign for gaining 500,000 fans on Facebook. Allowing for benefits in exchange for an action from the user uses tangible ways measure the engagement.
  2. Be consistent with your message and values when the situation is adverse. It’s no surprise that given the success of the Facebook campaign for TGIF that to execute the promise of a free burger could be a challenge. The ability for conversation doesn’t always mean that it will be positive. Nick Cifuentes provides several tough examples of hands on social media crisis management. Given the change in the landscape of communication there is no excuse for not being responsible, but staying traditional while communicating during backlash can perpetuate the damage.
  3. Take advantage of opportunities for social validation. This week Facebook extended their share tool, including adding new functionality to count of the number of times the URL has been shared on Facebook. The ease of using the new features helps the silent fan become an extension of the conversation. Touting the new analytics for the share tool, you can now access the information associated with each link shared on Facebook:
  • Users share the link on Facebook.
  • Users “like” the shared story.
  • Users comment on the shared story on Facebook.
  • Users click back to your site from the story.

Have you used these concepts or tools to affect your network to convert fans into participants? What metrics are most important to your decision making to determine the return on influence?

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About Dave McNamara: Dave McNamara

Dave McNamara’s fascination with technology began early on as a child, visiting his father at work as a programmer at NASA. Dave is part of the Interactive team working with developing the agency’s web/mobile initiatives and advising on new media strategies. He is graduating this May with an MBA from Virginia Commonwealth University concentrating in Information Systems and Security. His perfect morning consists of sipping on a fresh-roasted cup of espresso and listening to old (and new) records.

 
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