Creating Passionate Social Media Messages

Posted by Dave Konig at 11 January, 2010, 7:00 am

One of the most valuable aspects of Social Media is its ability to spread a message both near and far. In order to effectively do that an agency needs to create a Social Media message their consumers can easily become passionate about.

The 5 Basics For A Passionate Message

The real key in creating passionate Social Media consumers is in the message. There are 5 basics that your overall message should follow in order to foster a sense of passion amongst your community…

Target Your Message To Your Community’s Interests

Just as the easiest way to reach an audience is to go where they already are, the easiest way to get your community interested in your message is to tailor it to their interests with something of unique use to them. It is important to understand the community perspective, be able to ignite their passion, and at the same time be both useful and entertaining in order to get your message out there.

Action Item: Consider what the goal of your message is and make a list of 5-10 specific interests from the viewpoint of your community. Identify the broadest one and tailor your message to that one specifically first before addressing any others.

For the #SMR2009 contest we understood that our audience was interested in Social Media itself. Therefore we tailored our message and the event itself around that interest.

Create A Clear Quick Action In Your Message

Both ease and convenience of action is vital. Most media consumers today do not have a long attention span and have even less patience when being asked to do something that is diverting them from what they want to be doing. Your message can be moving, fill them with a need to act, and light the passion in their hearts… but it will be for nothing if they are then blocked from decisively acting quickly. By removing as many barriers you can there is an increase in a chance of success of meeting your goal, whatever it may be.

Action Item: Define a clear action that you want your message to direct to. Make sure it is an action of relative ease and preferably one they perform without navigating away from the message.

For the #SMR2009 contest we created a clear path of action for both nominations and voting. We included specific platform instructions and accommodations for Twitter since we know that a large portion of our audience utilizes it, and made the actions as easy as possible by providing both a sample nomination via Twitter and an in page nomination form.

Utilize Multiple Media Formats

What media formats will work best for your message? Will it be in an entirely written format or will you be able to use images as well? What about video and audio? Whatever formats you choose to use, be sure that they are also embeddable and usable by others. Allowing others who are passionate about your message to embed a video, audio, graphic, or even the written word on their own will only help you to reach a wider audience. This is your ultimate goal, and enabling your passionate consumers to reproduce your efforts is vital.

Action Item: Look at your different spokes and make a note of what offers the ability to embed content as opposed to what does not. Whoever allows embedding, create a piece of media for that platform, and then embed that piece of media as part of your message.

For #SMR2009 we did not use any embeddable media. This was a conscious choice we made because of the wide scope of platforms we were dealing with. You can see this idea in action at the #FCBLOG09 Contest hosted by FireCritic. Towards the bottom of the page he not only is providing graphics for use on other blogs, but he is also providing the HTML code so they can easily cut and paste it.

Centralize Your Goals

So just how much can you really fit into 140 characters? Chances are your message and the call to action will exceed that limitation. This is why either a blog post or a page to direct your community to is vital. A blog post has the advantage of being transmitted via RSS, but a page has an advantage when it comes to long term search engine results.

Action Item: Centralize your message and action onto a page (if you’re blog platform allows pages that is), author a post about it, and link to the page via your other spokes.

For #SMR2009 we had a page with all the rules and forms as well as a blog post with the Quick Rules linking to the page. All of our Twitter and Facebook mentions specifically linked to the page.

Believe In Your Message

Your belief in your message will be evident by the actual effort you put into it. The absolutely worst thing you can ever do is to leave out a step or a stage in limbo. Have a clear cut schedule as to what needs to be done by when, and then stick to that schedule. Worried about unforseen circumstances for a step you may need to manually do? Build yourself a little bit of a cushion but announce that up front in the time table.

Action Item: Use Google Calendar or another time/task keeping tool when planning out your campaign. Be realistic in the planning stages so that your delivery does not falter.

Going into #SMR2009 we had a specific timetable set-up. We were providing 10 days of nominations along with 10 days of voting (we actually provided 12 days of voting but subtracted the Christmas Eve and Christmas Day holidays from the equation) which we initially thought would be enough time to both get the results from the Judges AND privately ask the Finalists for a blurb for the voting page. Due to the high volume (and uber-quality) of the nominations, we extended the judging time but this didn’t allow us to speak to the Finalists prior to the official announcement which still went off on time.

About the author

Dave Konig wrote 205 articles on this blog.

Dave has been involved in Social Media since 2005 through the current major services and some defunct ones as well. During this time he has been able to hone the craft by testing out the theories of others, creating his own philosophies, and gathering a better understanding of the mediums involved through networking and most importantly actual practice.