Dipping your toes into Digital Social Media advertising.

Brief post this week, as these days my day job is fast becoming a day/night job. After the dialogue following last week’s post, I wanted to expand on social media’s definition a bit this week, as well as look at some easy ways to get started in “digital social media advertising.”

To get a slightly different perspective on potential digital social media advertising campaigns, let’s first take a really simplistic view of digital social media. Similar to ecommerce being digital representations of real-world commercial interactions, let’s define digital social media as all digital representations of real-world social interactions. We will limit our definition of social interaction to those interactions occurring among groups of people to avoid including communications between one individual and one other individual (most email) or one individual to many other individuals (most digital news). I know some email groups could count — and blog news sites have comment sections — but let’s just say, for argument’s sake, that the focus of the medium has to be group, or many-to-many interactions.

With the definition of digital social media as any digital representation of real-world social interactions, to take those first baby steps into digital social media advertising, the first step for any advertisers should be to look at their current advertising within real-world social events and situations.

A good example that came up at Jumpstart’s Think Digital event had to do with community advertising. Some conference participants commented that dealerships used to be the center of the community, sponsoring little league teams and hosting local events. These are great examples of sponsoring real-world social activities. So a good first step for exploring potential digital social media advertising opportunities would be to look at sponsoring the enhancement of little league Web pages (ideally to include social media functionality) or digital event Web pages (again with social media functionality like event organization and post-event content and discussions). These digital representations of social activities are viable ways to build associations between your brand and people’s social interactions.

Moving into the big leagues, what campaigns do you run with major sports stars or teams? What initiatives can you take to continue your sponsorship online and facilitate social interaction around these sponsorships? For example, if you sponsor a road race in the real world, what online community can you sponsor/facilitate the development of to make sure that online conversations are happening around your brand?

There are countless other examples of places where just about any brand can consider inserting itself into real-world social events and interactions, but it seems as if the decision to dedicate resources to involvement in the digital representations of these social events and interactions requires a completely different set of justifications. Why? Look for the opportunities to support the digital extension of real-world social activities your brand wants to be involved in, and look to create value for these networks.

By Joe Marchese
Joe Marchese is President of Archetype Media, developing the next generation brand advertising platform, and aiming to bridge the gap between Madison Avenue and Silicon Valley.
Courtesy of http://www.mediapost.com

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