Brand advocacy is often listed in the top reasons a brand should use social media. We create social media campaigns that make people feel an affinity with our brand, we become part of their day, helping them with tools we create and making them chuckle with content we post. As the social media industry comes of age the pressure is on to find the magic algorithm that tells us the ROI on this activity. I often look at outcome goals from campaigns, referral traffic to a website or signups depending on the client's aims. This is a common approach and can be used to measure the success of a campaign. There is a new tact being quickly snapped up by brands hunting for the value of a tweet and that's incentivised sharing. This in its self is nothing new, websites and blogs have long been making us pay for a tweet to get that free information we want. What's interesting is how this technique has now started turning peoples' social media accounts into adverts.
An example of this is Domino's 'Tweets For Treats' campaign that ran today. This gives pizza lovers the opportunity to get a cheaper fix by tweeting using the hashtag #letsdolunch between 9am and 11am this morning (GMT). Each tweet knocked another 0.01p off the price of a pizza. By the time the competition closed the price had gone down to £7.74 and everyone could order a pizza at this bargain price. Domino's not only had Twitter users advertising for them they also got them to order a pizza, something they might not have otherwise done on a Monday afternoon.
Domino's campaign is just one example of how we are turning our followers into adverts; brand advocacy has gone from passive to proactive. We don't just want people to casually mention something cool they saw on our brand's Facebook Page earlier that day we are asking them to tell people. Don't be mistaken into thinking this is a negative thing, there are endless benefits to the social media savvy - cheap pizza being just one! You will also see people popped on to a plane for a press conference, given a new product with the hope of them getting the conversation about said new product going online with a single tweet (Nike).
There's the more obvious version of people as adverts with influential bloggers paid to get enthusiastic about a product or service. Doing this is now becoming old hat and with the wider audience wise to it the influence drops. In the future we will see more ideas that allow everyone to be involved and in turn be rewarded.
As marketing changes people become open to the idea of becoming a virtual sandwich board for the brands they love. Tweeting about your favourite bag or pair of shoes is the evolution of the logo. An offline example of this is two Cambridge students who are charging businesses to have their logo painted on their face for a day; you laugh but they've so far raised more than £25,000 towards their University fees and are going international.
If you've seen any good examples of a brands asking for tweets or Facebook posts in exchange for discounts post them below, perhaps even bad ones.