I was recently a speaker at the Digital Marketing for Financial Services conference. I gave a one hour presentation on “Effective Social Media in a Regulated Environment.”
The presentation went very well. I also had the chance to connect with some very smart people in the field.
The amazing folks at Advisor.ca wrote a great article about the conference, with several references to the presentation I gave. If you get a chance, give it a read.
Jeff Atwood writes a great article on Digital Sharecropping. That’s the concept that built many of the Social Networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and Flickr. Those sites just provide the foundation, but the content on the sites is provided by the users. The reason the users provide all of the content is…
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Well, that’s a good question. Why do the users provide free content (and essentially, labour) someone else’s site? Generally a site that makes a profit off that content? Why would they so often be willing to give up their intellectual rights to that content?
That’s something to keep in mind when formulating your plan. If your Digital Strategy includes building a community around your brand, you have to ask yourself very early on, why would someone want to take the time to be part of this community and provide free content. What am I going to give them in return?
It has to be a two-way street. There has to be an added value or benefit for your community to be part of your community. Or as Jeff put it so well, the user will ask themselves, “What do I get out of the time and effort you’ve invested in this website? Personally? Professionally? Tangibly? Intangibly?”
If you don’t have a good answer to that question, you might want to take a closer look at the rest of your Digital Strategy.
My current favourite image. This napkin sketch was tweeted by Babs Rangaiah of Unilever (@babs26). It has been attributed to Demetri Martin, the author of a book called This Is A Book.
