Happy New Year!
Our beloved politicians have all but guaranteed 2013 will be an eventful year by starting us off with a slow motion leap over a cliff. Not sure when we hit the ground or whatever it is we’re going to hit, but either way I’ll be glad when we stop hearing “fiscal cliff”!
Our friends at Bridged Design wrapped up 2012 with an interesting post about the importance of sharing. What does this have to do with the fiscal cliff? I suppose the thought of Psy doing his dance-thing and our politicians doing their dance-thing as we go over the cliff struck me kinda funny. May 2013 be less bizarre than 2012…. All the best everyone!
Social Media: What You Can Learn From the Top Shares of 2012 from Bridged Design
What do the qualities of remarkable employees, the President of the United States and a Korean international sensation have in common? They all produced the top shared content in 2012.
Nothing matters more in social media than being shared. When other people share your content, they vouch for you to their friends, followers and contacts. But why do people share content? Because it’s instantly gratifying? Because they want people to have a high opinion of them? Perhaps it’s just plain good. Whatever the case, we’re going to deconstruct the top 3 most shared articles, tweets and videos of 2012 on LinkedIn, Twitter and YouTube, respectively, to get some answers.
1) Be a Better Employee
The ten most popular stories on LinkedIn all dealt with self-improvement. Not really a surprise considering the audience on LinkedIn wants to become more efficient in their respective fields. LinkedIn attributes the self-improvement crave to the economy, as people search for “any edge they can find in the workplace.” That’s why Jeff Haden’s article on Inc., “8 Qualities of Remarkable Employees,” was shared more than 24,000 times on LinkedIn.
Here’s What Happened
While LinkedIn may blame the economy, we attribute the “craze” to an occupational hazard of working on the web. It’s in our genes to want to improve ourselves, and it’s the culmination of social desire to be liked, shared, +1’d and overall, popular. Who wouldn’t want to be the best person they could possibly be? Haden found out what motivates his contacts on LinkedIn (the desire to be the best) and used it to 1) Help them achieve this, or 2) Confirm that they are already remarkable. It’s a win-win scenario!
So how do you find out what motivates your audience?
Here’s How
Consider the social network you promote your content on. I’m sure by now you’re familiar with the phrase, “if you market to everyone, you market to no one,” right? But that doesn’t mean you have to find a niche, gut it, and get all cozy inside a niche inside another niche like Luke Skywalker in a tauntaun’s belly. There’s a general drive inside employees of all industries, and that is to get ahead of the competition. Here’s an excerpt from Haden’s article:
“Great employees are reliable, dependable, proactive, diligent, great leaders and great followers… they possess a wide range of easily-defined—but hard to find—qualities.”
Can you tell what industry this article is geared toward? That’s because it’s flexible, and applies to everyone who wants to make more money in their field. When it comes to the social media universe, not all worlds are created equal. There are no concrete rules, you simply have to be adaptable, responsive, engaged, and knowledgable of your audience. Watch out when you try to share the same exact sentiments on Twitter and LinkedIn together, or try to hashtag on Facebook, you may end up looking like a #fool. Take a look at some social media marketing practices that really grinds our gears.
2) Four More Years
When Barrack Obama defeated Mitt Romney to extend his presidential term on November 6, 2012, he commemorated the victory on Twitter by tweeting, “Four more years” with a picture of him and wife, Michelle, hugging. It only took a few hours before the president’s tweet broke not one, but two records, becoming both the most retweeted of 2012 and the most retweeted ever. The tweet was propelled across 200 countries to reach over 810,000 retweets and 300,000 favorites.
Here’s What Happened
Well, for starters he’s the President of the United States (duh). The high status of his position has made Barrack Obama the fifth most followed account on Twitter (Bieber and Gaga got this on lock), but beyond that, he has worked to establish a conversational rapport with his audience. You don’t need 32 million followers to establish such a rapport; you just need something engaging to talk to them about. Creating an instant rapport is a vital part of using social media properly, because people need to be able to relate to you and feel as though there is some sort of relationship there. To many of his followers, the 2012 win was an event worth commemorating, as they shattered records to share the celebratory tweet.
Okay, so instant rapport, gotcha… Um, how do you do that now?
Here’s How
Talk to one person at a time. Be authentic. Don’t talk at people, carry a conversation with them. Crowdsource. Get people involved. Become a living part of the network, not a concrete fixture.
President Obama’s social media campaign was effective enough to engage 53% of 18-29 year olds to get out and vote, the highest outcome since 18 year olds won their voting right. This same demographic also happens to be the largest age pool on Twitter. Obama’s campaign knew exactly what would get him shared across social media, and when he belted out an impromptu bar from Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together” in front of millions of people, including Al Green himself, he knew such an unexpected and human moment would make the video a YouTube sensation. The speech, which dealt with student loans, has over three million hits on YouTube, a video-sharing site frequented by, you guessed it, students!
In what was perhaps the president’s most ballsy move (yes, more ballsy than singing Al Green in front of Al Green), Obama went to Reddit for an Ask Me Anything event. “Good luck, Obama. You’re going to need it,” wrote one user. In 30 minutes, hundreds of questions were lobbed and the president’s grammar was even corrected, as the AMA event caused Reddit to temporarily crash from the more than 200,000 visitors, Reddit’s highest traffic day ever. The lesson here is to be engaging, conversational and human. People relate to people, not corporate jargon.
3) Gangnam Style
You can’t escape it. According to Google, we watch more than 4 billion hours of video every month. So it’s safe to assume that people love videos. But how did a relatively unknown Korean singer name Psy manage to crack over 971 million views with “Gangnam Style,” more than four times the amount of 2011’s most viewed video, “Friday,” by Rebecca Black?
Here’s What Happened
YouTube’s number 1 video of 2012 was Gangnam Style by Psy. Not just because it was a catchy song, but because Psy had the courage to put himself out there in a way that could be ridiculed, as well as go against the timid South Korean pop culture. Because of it’s unexpectedness, Psy didn’t have to create an instant rapport to get shared through social media. Psy’s hit song came out of nowhere; It was unforeseen and it worked. The song was courageous and rebellious enough to get noticed by America’s top stars, who then vouched for him, creating an international sensation. If he plays it safe with his next single, it’s unlikely to be a hit. People crave unexpectedness, and that comes with courage.
Here’s How
When it comes to unexpectedness, the usual rhetoric behind the sharing of such media is that the leader (the creator of the content) is vouched for by a follower (a reputable face in social media) that then makes the content spread like wildfire. It’s a simple explanation, and not entirely false. The problem, however, is it makes people think their only chance of success is on the whims of a celebrity stumbling upon (see what I did there?) their video, or what have you.
But that’s not the case. There’s a very specific machine at play that gets your hard work shared by the masses.
YG Entertainment, the record label behind Psy’s Gangnam Style, organically grew its core audience in Korea, and formed American partnerships, all before Gangnam Style was released. YG’s YouTube channels had about 2.5 million subscribers before Gangnam Style, meaning that the video was always destined for a high view-count. What turned Gangnam Style into an international sensation, rather than another trendy YouTube video, was the content.
With the audience right where they wanted them, YG just needed the right amount of unexpectedness to create a global phenomenon. The song, even in Korean, was catchy to American’s for its American Pop-like synth chords and catchy chorus. The video itself was colorful enough to attract the youth crowd. Furthermore, the song was a departure from the South Korean pop scene, as Psy provided a social commentary on the misguided materialism of the Gangnam district, where the average apartment costs $715,000.
One critic called the American fascination with Psy a “freak-show mentality,” where people are drawn to his weirdness. The lesson we can all learn from this is to be authentic. Don’t do what you think people expect of you, do what you want, and with courage.