Behavioral Storytelling

One presentation that suits my thoughts on how social media should be used by brands. Should take some time to write my own thoughts upon this.

Behavioral Storytelling: Social Content Strategy from Michael Leis

Broadcasting Your Life

Not owning a TV for a long period of time isolates me from TV news. If something is burning I will eventually find from the radio or online, but I skip the noise from TV. The curious thing is that all the people I know on Facebook are never re-broadcasting TV news, they are only publishing their own lives and stuff happening/ lived, photos from events, articles and books red. Is it because the content is hard to be retransmitted, not being available online or the fact it has a poor quality?
Later edit:
And then I discovered TNN, Twitter News Network.

Authority and popularity

We take examples from real life, from things that happened, use them unquoted and forget who came up in the first place with the idea. They have the right to be mentioned that they were first, but nobody acknowledges them as another man turned the idea into one more popular. So creative authority is being transferred to the famous creator and everybody refers to the second author.  

I know that only a lawyer can solve this issue, but the lawyer does not transfer authority to the first author, unless they know how to turn it into popularity.  Would I like to work fo such a cause?

Der Lauf Der Dinge

Honda, The Cog

One week without telephone

While  changing jobs I had to give up the company telephone and since I do not own a personal phone anymore, I had to wait for the new number. I could have taken the number with me, but do not care about telephone numbers since in the past I lost my agenda several times.

What did I loose: the urge of recency. Of course I was not pressured by anything, but still, I was constantly online to find out what's new, who's meeting who, thoughts of friends and thoughts of certain online publisher or bloggers. I lost it and enjoyed a magazine. I red Zeppelin's March Edition and Dilema's Veche last week newspaper. Enjoyed the magazine paper, the print design and colors.

What did I gained: my own thoughts. I often look at people in pubs or restaurants and disregard their autistic behavior of constantly checking the phone, as I am also autistic when with a smart phone in hand. Loosing the smart phone, I lost the need of checking my accounts every hour or even sooner. I had several other devices to be connected to the "world", but my device was missing. When with friends or family, I often leave the telephone aside, but also consciously sometimes I ignore conversation because I want to see/ read something else. This time I was forced to be present and to actively participate to conversation or I had the time to be only with my thoughts.

What I wish: tablet and normal phone. I really believe that accessing online by tablet will diminish the recency urge, specially in those moments when you need to be present and not just physically, while the phone will keep you connected for urgent or pleasant talks. Also, it is very difficult to pull out from your jeans pocket an ipad, even the mini version.

Broaden-and-Build

While trying to find ways of explaining admin roles/ community managers work in Social Media, I stumbled upon a psychology theory, brought to my attention by Costin Jelea. Broaden-and-build, the theory of positive emotions. In one sentence if people are experiencing positive emotions, they become more creative, wiser, socially integrated and thus happier.

A community manager always has to stay positive an keep the answers for the members of the community assertive and favorable to the brand. This is rule number one. In Social Media you never fight. But the interesting question is what happens between admins and the people they answer for or get engaged to, on long term?

If the relation between the psychologist and his patient is meant to cure the patient and methods of broaden-and-build theory can do this, what happens between the admin and brand advocates?

First of all, let's define the therapy roles. The admin is the brand social media psychologist. Brand advocates are the people who are most present in the community/page, comment and interact with the brand often. They are those who need counseling from the brand. The reasons for which they come to "therapy" are different, depending first on the category and second on the conversation pattern. They come for beauty advices in case of cosmetics and end up talking also about self confidence. They come for entrepreneur advices and start talking about community issues.

Just like in any therapy interaction, admins and brand advocates get attached. The admin raises a question or launches a discussion on a social network and he is the first one to give the answer or guide it. If the admin respects the first rule, he will have a crowd to talk to and guide it further. The brand content has to raise positive feelings. (second rule of social media). I'm not talking about posting funny cats or comedy movies/illustration. I'm talking about generating good content, educational or entertaining, that follows brand equity and values. This is how the transfer of emotions begins, from the admin, towards the brand advocates, by starting a conversation that enables people to write positive stuff.

The second step for the admin, when transfer happens, is to become friends with the advocates and educate them to create more valuable content. They are sharing same values, so why should't they become friends? The reason behind this is to generate the milestone of online communication - WOM, to have more people taking the message further, but also to generate duplication of content.

Social Media and the Unconscious

What if the only role of social media were to drive conversation? Then it would sound like you're going every day to your psychotherapist and unveil him your conscious thoughts so that your unconsciousness could get out or deposit itself in a another box.

If you watch an analytic account and search for referrals you also observe that social does not drive traffic. It contains and consumes itself, as unconscious thoughts mess with your mind.

You do not take decisions upon on what you are reading and interacting on your newsfeed, it only helps you deposit and include information for further discussions or cognition processes. Brands should take social media as an opportunity for listening and driving conversation, just like a psychologist listens to his patient. Consider also that a patient can get cured and would no longer need the brand. Then the conversation changes.