A few days ago, WebProNews discussed What Brands Are Doing Wrong With Visual Social Media with Apu Gupta( the founder of visual analytics company Curalate). Here’s the highlights, in Gupta’s own words:
“I’ve always looked at this as less of a social network phenomenon and more of a consumer behavior one.”
“The primary problem we see most brands facing is that they’re too focused on the content they’re pushing out rather than the content their fans are organically sharing.” (italics are mine)
“Today, if your consumer is on a network, your brand is on the network, whether it’s an active participant there. So the real question should be do brands want to remain relevant to their audiences wherever they live?”
“The fact is that science still knows very little about what makes a great image and how humans will react to them. In the absence of that, our general best practices involve images that are authentic, inspiring, and unexpected.”
The challenge for us is developing images and content that are “authentic, inspiring, and unexpected” so that our fans share it.
This is a little like shooting in the dark and hoping you hit a target, isn’t it? One way to shed some light would be in getting to know your customer base, looking at what they share, and interacting with them. The more you understand your customers, the better chance you have of understanding which messages will resonate and be shared on social media.
There’s a lot to social media lead generation and it can be hard to quantify because it is an organic process and it changes. It’s good to be reminded that focusing on our own content instead of our fans’ sharing preferences is a social media mistake.