Blog

By Ben Kelly, President and Chief Strategy Officer at Niche (Niche)

In the media-verse, there have traditionally been 3 media channels: Earned, Paid, and Owned.

However, a new media channel has emerged in recent years, called Shared Media, and, while still a fresh and untapped frontier, it has the potential to rival the other media channels in its ability to truly connect with consumers.

Shared media is the media platform on which social media virtual communities like Twitter and Facebook sit. In this media channel, engagement (authentic conversation) is its currency.

For a brand, engagement leads to two-way dialogue with consumers. True and meaningful engagement is a trusted relationship that money can’t buy.

Unfortunately, not many brands have tapped into the power of shared media. Few brands have achieved the high levels of true engagement that are possible in virtual communities like Facebook.

Here are some tips on how to gauge and develop engagement in shared media:

1. Facebook likes do not make an engagement metric. How can you measure your brand’s current engagement level percentages? You can use our Engagement Formula. Just divide the number of people “talking about this” (liking, sharing, commenting, creating stories) by the number of members in the community, and multiply by 100. For instance, Coke’s Facebook page, as of January 14, 2014, has 426,153 people talking about it and 78,656,494 members.
   

   426,153 people x 78,656,494 members x 100 = 0.54 %

   By comparison, one of our own online communities, for passionate largemouth bass fishermen (/getlargemouth) has 42,190 people talking about it x 201,584 members x 100 = 21 per cent . Even though Coke has many more members (70+ million), they are only getting 0.54% engagement out of their current Facebook community.

   The “talking about this” metric is a publicly visible stat on every Facebook page that is listed right below the fan count. It is a metric that counts the number of people who liked, shared or commented on content published by the page in the past 7 days.

2. Promotions are not enough of an incentive. We worked on a project with Reynolds Wrap a few years ago. They wanted to get more Likes on their Facebook page, so we made a pledge that for every person that liked the page, Reynolds would donate a dollar to the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation. They received thousands of Likes, but most of those people only responded to the cause. There was no further interaction with those consumers on behalf of Reynolds afterwards.
3. Don’t worry about censoring people in your community. In an engaged and trusted environment, your members will help censor the group on your behalf, as they all want to protect that which is authentic.
4. Give before you take. You must participate with your community and develop a relationship before you can earn their trust. You must first give before you, as a brand, can expect to take from your customers/shared media members.

Ben Kelly
Ben Kelly is a 15-year digital strategy and social media expert, responsible for many multi-platform campaigns for organizations such as Corus Entertainment, Rogers, TSN, CBC, Ford Motor Company and the Minnesota Vikings. He has held many senior positions in digital marketing and built successful marketing and digital communications agencies throughout his career. He currently operates his companies Communities of Passion and Niche (Niche) with his partners Syd and Jacob Kessler, and works with clients such as Rogers Media and the TV series Degrassi. To communicate with Ben, please contact him at or at 416-520-5900.