We write this post partly in response to an interesting article we read on PromoMarketing's website and partly to offer our thoughts on using promotions in Social Media.

We've mentioned before our rather scathing attitude towards the phenomenon of brands just trying to accumulate as many likes and follows as possible, which we regard as confusing faux popularity with brand engagement. However, there have been one or two promotional campaigns utilising Social Media, e.g. Ocean Spray's Bounce Your Berry, which have been exclusively Facebook-based and have proved extremely effective.

The main point of the Promotional Marketing article was the assertion that creative promotions stimulate engagement, which we heartily agree with. In social media terms they are fast to implement, relatively cost-effective and great for motivating individuals to do your marketing for you. They also cite 3 consumer types which you should consider: the self-explanatory 'spectators', 'joiners' and 'creators'.

Whilst they alude to it with the 'creators' category, we actually think that this sub-division is the most important target group and where the majority of effort should be focused. Malcolm Gladwell in his famous book, 'The Tipping Point', refers to the 'law of the few'. The basic theory is that 20% of the people do 80% of the work in making an idea go viral. They are categorised as Connectors, Mavens and Salespeople - people that draw people together, people that acquire deep knowledge on every subject and people that are naturally able to sell. Seth Godin takes the concept further in his book 'Unleashing the Ideavirus' which talks about harnessing the power of 'promiscuous sneezers' and 'powerful sneezers'.  

Promiscuous sneezers people who can be bought by a variety of inducements and are not held in high esteem as opinion formers - but if they're promiscuous enough they can be a very useful ally. They'd even share their grandmother if it got them entry into a prize draw.

Powerful sneezers are extremely influential and held in high esteem and (in theory) can't be bought. If it was known that they were being bought they would lose their credibility and hence influence. (B-list celebs do it all the time).

Now if you embark on a Social Media campaign, we would confidently suggest that the majority of people that are proactively using these services are sneezers of one sort or another. Indeed the casually promiscuous sneezers fall into the category that we highlighted at the beginning of this article, namely people who are following and liking everything in their path if there is a prize draw or discount in it for their trouble.

So your social media campaign MUST bear both categories of sneezer in mind and treat them accordingly.

Here are some techniques which will help you harness the power of Social media sneezers:

1) Make it relevant

Think of your brand personality, your product, what people perceive you as. Whatever form your campaign takes, it must reflect your personality and enhance that perception with your target audience.

2) Encourage viral seeding

The cornerstone of spreading a virus is to make it easy, appealing and rewarding to do so. Your campaign treat, freebie or offer must be easily (and ideally engagingly) shareable. Think: apps that make an amusing video or image using your uploaded photo or a game that enhances your brand personality (see Doritos for examples). Reward the promiscuous with extra entries for the more people they refer, a bigger discount, an extra free gift. Always make it very easy to share your efforts. The promiscuous types are going to shout about any little extras they earn. They yearn for this validation / attention.

3) Get the Edge - don't let up after starting your Facebook campaign

It's tempting to think that creating a FB promo and setting up the prizes, or whatever, is the end of the story. To mis-quote the Jim'll Fix it Song - your effort was only the start of it. Promotional Marketing makes passing reference to Facebook's EdgeRank. EdgeRank determines what appears on your news feed when you sign in to Facebook. So, it's a very important part of getting your campaign message across and motivating sneezers.

An Edge, as far as Facebook is concerned, is every interaction you make whilst on Facebook - every like, every photo uploaded, every status update creates an edge. EdgeRank uses an algorithm to determine the order of news items on your Facebook feed based on Affinity (how friendly you are with the entity you interacted with), Edge Weight (some events like a photo, have more of an edge than just 'liking' something*) and Recency (or time decay - the older the less relevant without being ageist of course). We'll focus on EdgeRank in more detail below.

4) Don't lose momentum

It's easy to get complacent and stop when you've reached a target number of Likes etc. but your Social Media equity can soon plunge like a black day on the stock market. You wouldn't just stop talking to real friends just because you've got enough so why do it to your virtual friends?

Predictably there are plenty of services out there that will help you get your brand up the EdgeRank and make your marketing efforts work harder for you. EdgeRankChecker was the top result in Google last time we checked!

But, if you prefer a more hands-on approach, here are some Top Tips to make your Social Media activity create a buzz and give you the edge on EdgeRank.

• Increase affinity with your fans before a campaign / launch to increase your presence on their news feed - create some teasers, start a debate, ask questions related to your brand etc - Where, When, Why and Would are a good place to start
• Post Games, Apps and Trivia - these score highly on EdgeRank
• Interact with fans - respond to them, start conversations
• Upload relevant Photos, videos or use Wall Sapplets (polls, coupons, etc) all of which rank higher than regular posts
• Time is of the essence - determine when most of your fans tend to login to their accounts and start interacting with you then time your posts accordingly to be top of their news feed (if your EdgeRank is healthy of course). Also, make your activity time-sensitive and make a big fuss of building up to the event as well as during and after!
• Use Links in your posts - they may rank lower than photos or videos but links can still encourage engagement and do have an impact on objects overall EdgeRank
• Spell it Out clearly - apart from in teaser campaigns where cryptic is the name of the game, if you want your fans to take a particular action, tell them what to do. Research by Buddy Media found that fans follow instructions well. The simpler the better. 

Conclusion

Like most aspects of marketing, forewarned is forearmed. It's all very well doing a big, expensive, glitzy promotion, but it won't fulfil its potential if you don't pay attention to the details, the build up and keeping the dialogue ongoing, fresh and interesting. Every penny counts when you're putting together a social media campaign so you have to make sure every effort is as effective as possible. Go and start spreading those Sneezes!

* See! We told you gettings Likes on Facebook isn't all it's cracked up to be!