Are creative thinkers using social media correctly?

It's time for brands to worry about building personalised memories for their admirers and not get caught up in the ROI struggle.

A lot of agencies have decided to focus on what I would call 'the easy money' or 'the social media stuff'.

Is that the way we should look at it?

Anish VargheseIs a topical post, thought of the day or a content bucket which is irrelevant to a brand going to resolve your marketing challenges?

Is it helping us re-shape businesses? Is it making you happy as a thinker?

By the end of this decade, 85 per cent of customer relationships with a brand will lack any human interaction; in that case, a dynamic and personalised interaction will be crucial.

It's time for us to worry about building personalised memories for our admirers rather than building only ROI-specific campaigns.

If brands don't change now, then they will be in trouble in the near future.

Content that is worth watching plays a vital role here. Stories needs to be built by understanding the emotional intelligence of our audience. Modern day storytelling is the complete opposite of traditional storytelling. Traditional storytelling conveys the core message at the end, while in modern mediums, we could put the core message at the beginning, as a hook to ensure people watch it further. Thus, the first 10 seconds of our content are very important.

Power of Conversation

In my opinion, we're already late in leveraging the full potential of conversations. It's a powerful medium that has the power to spread your story, just like fire.

It's got the power to initiate a healthy conversation about your brand and its admirers.

It's as simple as: When people talk about your brand, your brand grows.

We should focus on creating content which is worth watching, rather than on creating 'disposable content'. The question is - How will we do it?

There is a lot that social media can do to help create curiosity among consumers and brands.

The responsibility, of building a seamless integration of brands with the beauty of conversations in social media, lies with us.

Deciding on what zone the conversation should go into plays a meat-and-potato situation here.

Mine of Insights

Apart from conversations around content, social media is a colossal mine with exceptional insights. I read somewhere: 'Social media is about sociology and psychology more than technology'. It's true; we can understand our consumers' psychology on these platforms.... in other words, behavioural patterns from the brand page itself. This information can be adopted as proof of our creative processes, by tracing a behavioural pattern from the social space itself.

Browsing habits play a vital role in social media too. Primarily there are three kinds of browsing habits - 1) I'm in hurry. 2) I've a little more time. 3) I've enough time.

Formats should change basis these habits. For example, a 10-second video or GIF will be the best bet for a 'I'm in hurry' kind of audience.

If a certain percentage of admirers express minimum on a brand page, say if they react to our communication with just one word, we can jump to a conclusion that the audience is not expressive, which means they are not an evolved audience. In this case, as creators we should think about an 'in the face' type of communication which can entertain them quickly. Evolved users express more, hence they will put across their point of view in a far more evolved way.

There are enough exit points in social media, so every second matters to us.

The attention span of humans is getting shorter. As per a study by Microsoft, in 2000, it was 12 seconds... now it's close to eight seconds.

You will be excited to know that a goldfish's attention span is just nine seconds; the human brain is fast, really fast. From a consumption point of view, we absorb content quickly and retain it quickly as well. People can look at and process content faster on a mobile device than on a desktop computer, recalling content after seeing it for just a quarter of a second. And it's no surprise that the younger the demographic, the faster the speed.

I feel the advertising side of social media is yet to enter the experiment stage.

Happy Thinking!

(Anish Varghese, national creative director, Isobar India)