What makes social media initiatives successful?

Whew! What a busy few weeks! I've been fortunate enough to be super busy at my day job, doing lots and lots of new business pitches, which is awesome in a rough economy like this one. I'm not sure anybody cares, but if so, apologies for the lack of posts. In any case, I was going to clean this up, but since I'm still busy, I'm just going to post this exactly as I sent it to Dave Knox, P&G brand manager and brains behind the excellent blog Hard Knox Life. Hope it's helpful!

hey dave-

hope the new year is treating you well! i just wanted to pass on a couple of thoughts- they may be super old news to you, but i thought i'd share in case they're not!

i don't think i mentioned it to you, but i do a blog with some friends about old metal that is roughly 100x more popular than anything else i've done. we're currently getting about 60K views a month, which isn't a ton by P&G standards, but considering that until recently we had done literally NOTHING to promote it, isn't too bad. i just recently decided to put more effort into getting more traffic, started reaching out to labels for reviews/interviews (i did zillions of both in my past in publishing), etc. you can check it out here (be warned that it's pretty crass!):
http://metalinquisition.blogspot.com

i haven't looked in detail on technorati, but i think it's fair to say it's one of the more popular metal blogs, for whatever that's worth. the part that excites me most is that we get between 20-70 comments on every post, which is a much more meaningful measure of "engagement" to me. i've also gotten tons of last.fm friend requests and comments, which is also cool. anyhow, from contrasting my experiences with Metal Inqusition with the various other blogs and social media projects i've worked on, i've learned a few things that i wanted to share.

1. build on your existing equity
this seems obvious, but it honestly is probably the most important part. between the 4 of us that do MI, our knowledge of metal is pretty much unparalleled (i'm not sure if that's something to be all that proud of!!), and it shows. you have tons of credibility as a brand manager, and people respond accordingly. if either one of us started a gardening blog, though, i'm not so sure anybody would pay much attention. so the big takeaway is that what's good for the goose isn't always good for the gander: a gardening blog is a great idea, just not a good fit for ME, you know? of course, the same goes for brands.

2. who you are matters just as much as what you know
my good friend chase is a fairly famous photographer and has one of the top 10 photo blogs ( http://chasejarvis.com/blog )- and he had never blogged until about 12 months ago. is his content all that much better than the other 9 zillion photo blogs? yeah, it's definitely better, but the real reason his blog (and youtube, twitter, etc) took off so quickly is because he's chase jarvis, famous jetsetting sports photographer. in other words, someone less famous could do the same blog with much less impressive results.

in our case, all of us have been in the punk/hardcore/metal scene since the late 80s, so we know tons and tons of people in "the scene" between us. i can't exactly operationalize how that drives traffic, especially since we're anonymous on the blog, but there is some kind of magic juice there for sure. oftentimes we'll get a comment from someone we knew back in the day and it's a chance to reconnect ("hey i remember you from that Internal Bleeding show in 97!"), which i think gives the readers a really personal connection that helps?? i don't know, i'd like to explore this topic more... but i think it's really the most critical determinant of success.

3. it's all about fit and authenticity!
put those two things together and it tells me that social media is all about finding the right fit for you/your brand. it must be real and authentic, or nobody will pay any attention. it's why some random kids from colorado or whatever can make a music video in their basement and get 2 million views but a megabrand like Saturn or something could spend $500K and get tumbleweeds in response. again, that's not some earth-shattering revelation, but after doing several different social media projects over the last couple of years, it's not just words on paper to me, i've completely internalized it. as much as we wish we could attach ourselves or our brands to whatever we wanted, it just doesn't work that way. it has to be an organic extension of the authentic core or it will fail, period.

for example, i am pretty much at the head of the class if you need to know about fighting, graffiti, and hardcore/metal. i sure wish that i was an expert on some things that were a little less sketchy and a lot more lucrative, but you know what? i'm not, so i need to work with what i've got! ditto for tide or whatever... you just have to take what you've got an make the most of it, and perhaps over time you'll get there.

anyway, sorry to go on for so long, but i thought i'd share! and by the way, don't miss BJ Penn vs GSP this saturday, it should be a barnburner. here's a great video to get you amped!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cl-beMYQ-K0

f

Freestyle: Benchmark for action sports social media strategy

OK, so first of all, I absolutely love Freestyle's Shark watch. This is a really fun reminder of days gone by, and it's pretty cool to see how much they can do on the design side just with colorways. Make sure you check out the selection! I also love their logo- hats off to whoever designed it.

Aside from the awesome Shark, Freestyle also has a very comprehensive and well-executed social media strategy that's as good of a blueprint as any. They use all the usual suspects like Twitter, Loopd, Facebook, MySpace, and so forth, but what I like the most is the Freestyle Challenge.

The concept is pretty straightforward: amateur athletes in skate, snow, wake, and other action sports upload "sponsor me" videos. Freestyle chooses two winners every month to join their "flow team." For those of you who don't speak bro, "flow" means free stuff. The concept isn't necessarily revolutionary, but it seems like they get a lot of submissions, and it's certainly well executed from a creative standpoint. Also, "Rock out with your clock out" is one of the best slogans I've ever heard!

Takeways

1. Lifestyle brands are uniquely suited for user-generated content platforms like this because the consumers are passionate about the brand in a way that isn't true of traditional brands. In other words, if your brand differentiates on price, performance and features, don't try this at home.
   
2. Freestyle uses social media effectively because they understand they norms and customs of each channel. Twitter has one set of rules, Facebook has another, and if you don't understand them, you should stand back and observe before jumping in.
3. The Freestyle Challenge is a win for the kids because they get free stuff and will be super stoked for the recognition. It's a win for Freestyle because they cement their credibility and start forming relationships with up and coming athletes early in their careers, and all they spend is a few hours watching videos and a few bucks on product.