• by Phil Leggiere , March 19, 2008

Particular social networks may come and go in popularity. The buzz about social media may ebb and flow as well. But one thing most marketers agree on is that the phenomenon of user-generated media is here to stay. The still unanswered question for marketers, however, is how to adapt meaningfully to it. The first step in answering that question, Adam Shlachter, Mediaedge:cia senior partner, and group director of MEC Interaction, explains below, is to lose the (still deeply ingrained) notion that UGM is just traditional media on steroids, calling only for yet more intrusive and intensive applications of media and targeting tactics as usual.

Behavioral Insider: How do you try to get brands to think about targeting social media?

Adam Shlachter: The first thing that needs to be understood is that social media or UGC spans across so many facets. Maybe the best way to define it is that it's anywhere consumers have a voice. That's a huge universe beyond just MySpace and Facebook, important as those are.

BI: Where does the behavioral component come in?

Shlachter: What we basically try to do is to match clients with the spaces that make the most sense to the conversations they want to start to or connect with. There are several possible ways to look at targeting social media. The most basic is just saying I want to connect through a media buy with avid music or movie enthusiasts. You say, based on the sites they've browsed, searches they've made, and products they've bought, they'll likely be interested in what we do. That's the conventional approach -- and it essentially looks at social media as just another media buy.

You can do that, and sometimes it's the appropriate thing to do. But where we've moved is to think in terms of going to where you know a critical mass of people you want to connect with are, and create a program of content or features that will directly add value to them. You can also look at what conversations are already going on, and then figure out how to join in to the conversation or start a new one. But the content and what you have to say must be truly relevant.

BI: Can you give me some examples of how this works with your clients?

Shlachter: A good example of this is a promotion we did with Energizer Pandora, where they created music forums for emerging bands. With Jansport we created a ‘Back to School' list application concurrently with a promotion to win items. Another example is an LG Mobile-sponsored promotion which had people submit their own music videos taken from a cell phone, which were then played on a mobile Web site devoted to new artists. These campaigns are aimed at relatively small niches by big media standards. The audiences is in the thousands rather than the millions, but the point is to have the minimal amount of wasted impressions. These are qualified audiences.

BI: What activities do you track?

Shlachter: There are a wide range of behaviors that can indicate not only interest -- which you get through search queries and profiles -- but forms of engagement, types of activities and applications downloaded, involvement in conversations. There are many ways of learning about social media users. The thing is to be extremely conscious that just because you can track something doesn't mean you should.

BI: The obvious reluctance some advertisers might have to the approach you're outlining is its lack of scaleability. Is that a common objection, or not?

Shlachter: Advertisers have progressed very rapidly in understanding that while hyper or laser targeting might not replace mass scale media targeting, it has a unique and increasingly critical role of its own. Because it's through actually participating in conversations that you find brand advocates.

BI: Obviously what you're developing isn't fundamentally about clicks. But where do metrics and measurement come in?

Shlachter: The metrics that are relevant to this approach have to do with community activation. In fact, we have specialists in-house focused on precisely this area, trying to understand the metrics that gauge success in this area. One such metric would be volume of conversation. A related one is level of engagement. We are also learning ways of measuring how conversations translate into brand favorability and loyalty. Or even how the buzz about a brand can be measured by volume of discussion and range and intensity of participation in discussions. These are the new range of metrics, which are just the starting point. They are still a little novel, but will become far more familiar to the new marketing landscape.

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