What Is Social Currency?

Hi, everyone. I feel terribly sorry for not posting articles for the last couple of days. I had to study for my final exam. Now that it's finally over, I will restart writing down articles about social media to strike up pleasant conversations with all of you. Enough with introduction. Let us start now.

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Today's topic is social currency. Seems like the word "social" is becoming more popular prefix these days. I guess many of you are now wondering how a currency can be social. Taking a quick look at how this system works might offer us an insight to what social currency is.

 

Here are some examples of how social currency works. You and your friends dined at a nice, decent restaurant. On your way back home, you made some nice remarks about the restaurant and its dishes. Then here's comes a magic. The restaurant sends you a mobile coupon to your cell phone. Actually this is what is now happening around us.

Thanks to the advent of social networking services and location based services, businesses discovered new ways to promote their brands and manage their customers. Mr. Pizza, a famous pizza franchise, announced that if you leave comments like "I had a nice lunch with my friends at Mr. Pizza" through "I'm IN", a Korean version of Foursquare, you can receive discount coupons that worth 2000 won. Same is for GAP, a world-renowned American fashion brand. So these days, comments you make, photos you take, videos you post online can actually turn into a usable sum of money. Isn't this so cool?

 

To explain this situation, Silicon Valley had to coin the term "Social Currency." This is a huge opportunity for every business. Facebook is planning to commercialize this idea with their own invention called "Facebook Place" which will support all types of online transactions. There had been something similar to social currency before. However, they all failed because there were no SNS and LBS to support that idea. Now that Facebook's membership amounts to 0.6 billion and Foursquare is steering its way to victory, it is pretty obvious that the future of social currency is very bright and promising.

Using Twitter To Connect with Audiences: Personality Matters

Hi, everyone. I was unable to post articles for a week because of my college visit to NYU Abu Dhabi. You never know how amazing that place is until you personally go there. I spent my weekend with the most talented and amiable people on Earth. I was really lucky to be in that group. Now it is time for us resume our conversation on social media. Let us start now.

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Now back to Twitter. Today's posting is not that directly related to Twitter marketing. However, I wanted to show you how important it is to have your own "personality" on Twitter to strike up conversations with other people. And that "personality" charm, as I will point out later, can be a genuine solution for those who are struggling with how to market their brands with Twitter.

Completing your bio on Twitter is absolutely important. When one takes a look at your bio, one has a glimpse of who you are. Keep it very simple and concise. Tell people about who you are by listing up the words that best characterize you. My bio says "High School Student Who Has A Deep Passion for Passion and Social Media." It is short, indeed. Yet, people will know that I am a high school student and that I have interests in fashion and social media. That is enough. Bio must not tell everything about you. People will get to know you once they follow you.

Now I will take Domino Pizza as an example. Domino Pizza was struggling at that time because of a video in which two part-timers spat on a pizza dough. People started attacking Domino Pizza for its low sanitation control. To be literal, people were shocked and evey boycotted whatever was made by Domino Pizza. To deal with this crisis, Domino Pizza came up with the idea of launching a Twitter. HOWEVER... things went awry...

Search results for Dominos were nearly catastrophic. People were obviously ignoring Domino Pizza or were not informed of the fact that it started tweeting.

It was quite apparent that things went differently from what Domino Pizza had expected. Since it barely had followers to support it and propagate its messages, it ended up failing to sort out the reputation issue that agonized it for a long time.

 

We have to take this example seriously. In terms of a crisis management, it was literally a disaster. BUT we need to see thing in another perspective, too. Why did Dominos fail miserably in the first place? You got it right. They had no followers at its side. From its inception, Domino Pizza's Twitter was created not to establish relationships, but to tackle the controversy surrounding them. There was no personality in it. People were not enchanted by this fact.

We always talk in the first person. It is all about "I" after all. You have to have charms that naturally attract people. Twitter, as we repeatedly witnessed, is an extended conversation. We are just doing our conversations online, not offline. What type of person do you love to chat with? People with their own colors. That is so true. So do not forget to have "you" in your Twitter if you want to be a twitter star.

Thy Yourself: Using Social Media to Build the Brand of You Part1

안녕하세요!! 슬프게도 일주일의 시작을 비와 함께 맞이했네요... 그래도 다들 기운 잃지 마시구 힘찬 하루 보내시길 바랄께요:) The following slide show has been shared on www.slideshare.net. Thank you for Parker Brand Creative Services for sharing this valuable information.

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이 슬라이드쇼는 Oran Parker가 만든 자료입니다. 프레젠테이션 내내 계란슬라이드를 사용했더군요. 처음에 유머를 주고자 말장난을 치네요. Egg-sited는 Excited랑 발음이 비슷하거든요. 이제 소셜미디어를 사용해서 퍼스널브랜드를 만드는 비법에 대해 알아보도록 해요:)

세계는 그 어느때보다 서로서로 연결되고 있습니다. 그리고 온라인 사용자 중에서 3/4는 소셜네트워킹사이트를 사용합니다. 무려 40억이 넘는 수의 사람이죠.

이제는 일어나야 할 때입니다. 세계 유명 브랜드들의 상당수가 소셜미디어와 관계를 맺고 있습니다. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Wikipedia 등 많은 소셜미디어들이 현재 엄청난 관심을 받고 있는 상황이죠. 그렇다면 이러한 소셜미디어를 통해 자신만의 브랜드를 정립할 수 있지 않을까요?

이번 슬라이드는 매우 중요한 의미를 지니는데요. "당신"이 먼저인지 "브랜드"가 먼저인지에 관한 이야기입니다. 왜 자꾸 계란이미지가 사용되는지 아시겠죠? 퍼스널브랜드는 바로 "당신"에 관한 것입니다. 따라서 포커스를 브랜드가 아니라 "당신"에게 맞추어야 하는 것이죠.

그러기 위해서는 당신에 대한 사색이 필요합니다. 먼저 당신이 누구인가에 대해 한 번 생각해보세요. 그리도 더 나아가서 당신의 관심사, 꿈, 신념, 생각, 희망 들에 대해 한 번 잘 살펴보세요. 이러한 고민들을 통해 당신이 누구인지 잘 정립해야만 당신을 대표하는 퍼스널 브랜드 또한 효과적으로 나올 수 있겠죠.

당신을 둘러싸고 있는 껍질을 깨고 나오는 것 또한 중요합니다. 속된 말로 배짱을 가지세요. 사람들은 당신의 겉모습이 아닌 바로 그 속을 알고 싶어하는 것이니까요. 그러기 위해서는 진실되어야 합니다. 소셜미디어는 바로 진솔한 커뮤니케이션에 관한 것이니까요.

가장 흔하게 하는 착각중에 하나가 소셜미디어를 사용하면 기존미디어에 대해서는 별로 신경을 쓰지 않아도 된다고 하는 생각인데요. 전통적인 미디어채널은 계속 사용할 수 있습니다. 소셜미디어와 기존 미디어를 대체 관계라고 생각할 필요가 없다는 것이죠. 그럼에도 소셜미디어를 사용하면 좀 더 보완적, 효과적으로 자신을 홍보할 수 있습니다. 만약 당신이 반사회적인 기질이 있다면 이제 그러한 태도는 버려야 할 때입니다. 당신이 살고 있는 세상은 관계의 세상입니다.

 

오늘은 소셜미디어를 통한 퍼스널 브랜드 구축을 위해 필요한 "태도"에 대해서 알아보았습니다. 내일은 좀 더 전략적으로 어떻게 당신을 홍보해야 하는지에 대해서 알아보도록 해요^^