Social Intentions Are Not Enough

More marketers are sticking their toes in the water and grappling with how to include social media in their campaigns.

I ran across several blog posts about the NOT in Columbus campaign that can be useful if you have intentions of going after viral stardom.

First of all, I have to applaud Experience Columbus for stepping out to the edge to try something new. Kudos to them, as well, for inviting local bloggers to a preview event and asking for feedback about their campaign. But, their timing was off. They did it after all the creative was done and expected bloggers to take up their campaign and run with it. This is a bit counter intuitive as most bloggers are not paid to blog and need some kind of personal investment to take up a cause in their blog posts.

You can go learn more about the campaign on The Other Paper and SEO & SEM Feed Aggregator (Jennifer also has links to other blogs discussing the campaign). What's interesting to me is the split between bloggers who are engaging with it, the ones who aren't, and the ones who are trying too hard to be, well, nice. [Since these bloggers were there, you should really go read their accounts.]

Basically, the campaign is all about what you won't find or can't do in Columbus. They created four videos and posted them on YouTube (since yanked) about the fact that you won't find pyramids, Sasquatch, the Eiffel Tower or be able to climb Mt. Everest there. Which can be funny, but they never followed up with the GREAT stuff their city has to offer.

What they wanted was for their campaign to go viral. It seems they tried to be a little too cute because they were focused on "viral" rather than being focused on the end result they wanted which was to get more visitors to "experience" Columbus.

This is the campaign website they created, although not live. [Thanks to Green Columbus for the pic]

I appreciate that they tried to present something interactive, but it begs the question of user intuition. Apparently, you have to roll over the graphics to figure out the navigation possibilities. My question is whether or not users will spend the time to figure out where they want to go?

Given that the focus is what can't be done in Columbus, why would users bother?

So, what do you think? Can you introduce this kind of a website interaction and expect users to spend the time and effort to decipher how to move through it? And, it's hard to share with others since you'd have to say something like "Go to the experience Columbus site and click on the spaceship to get to the information about xyz."

This appears to be one of those ideas better in thought than in execution. And the goal of creating something "viral" was the wrong goal.

I'm not trying to come down on Experience Columbus - rather I'm grateful to them for allowing us to learn from intention vs. outcome in social media campaigns. Even though it had to be painful for them.

Here are a few takeaways:

• If you want to do something social, involve people who spend a lot of time in the "social" space during the brainstorming and design process.
• Allow "viral" to be a "nice to have" - not the overall goal of your campaign.
• Remember the engagement equation. Spoof yourself all you want, but correct that impression before it takes hold. Make sure you include motivation for your audience to take the action you want them to pursue.
• Think about the Effort you're asking people to undertake. The less, the better - in specific regards to the web design.
• Be willing to learn, iterate and try again. The Experience Columbus folks appear to be doing a good job at participating in the ongoing conversation, graciously.

Social media is tricky. It's definition is all about the audience's ability to interact with the campaign. Experience Columbus learned this the hard way via the comments their videos inspired. More than anything else, this campaign points to the absolute necessity to know your "customers" and keep your focus squarely on what inspires, motivates and engages them to respond to you in the ways you want them to.

Comments

[Pete McGinty]

On behalf of Experience Columbus, thank you for a balanced and fair perspective on our intent. We understand now that we missed the mark in a number of areas and are committed to learning more about the social media space. Going forward, we plan on further engaging the Columbus blogging community in helping us do this. The community is passionate about Columbus and represents a significant opportuntiy to build and leverage ambassadorship for our city.

Pete McGinty
Experience Columbus
pmcginty@experiencecolumbus.com