Social media is likened to a conversation so if you’re a social media strategist your job is basically to converse with customers because the “company” itself can’t. You can go about it a few different ways.
- Conduct the conversation as yourself on behalf of the company
- Take on the persona of the company
- Create a fictitious company representative
Whatever strategy you take, Paul Worthington suggests that companies create a company guide for social media.
The new reality of online customer conversation means brands will need a strongly defined sense of self in order to succeed.
Worthington goes on:
Before opening yourself up to the conversation, before engaging outside, start with who you really are, what you as an organization really believe in, and what gets you out of bed in the morning.
Forget mission and vision statements. These are banal at best. Forget ‘shareholder value’ — No one ever got out of bed for increased shareholder value (but if you have something powerful to drive you, you have a better chance of creating plenty of it).
All good advice and something that strikes me as being very similar to creating a character in a screenplay. Maybe the analogy can be a useful one.
It’s not just what you say
The one thing you’ll hear over and over in screenwriting is that dialog is the last thing you write.
Write dialogue last and remember that the real drama of a film is underneath what is being said and done.
So think about the actions more than the particular message. How quickly do you respond to messages on Twitter? Do you have a profile on MySpace and Fackebook or should you just have one on Facebook? Have a blog? You get the point.
True character is revealed through crisis
The screenwriting guru Robert McKee explains in his seminal work, Story, how true character is created.
TRUE CHARACTER is revealed in the choices a human being makes under pressure – the greater the pressure, the deeper the revelation, the truer the choice to the character’s essential nature.
- Story: Substance, Structure, Style and The Principles of Screenwriting
Seems about right, we hear about great uses of social media most when there is a crisis – like when Hulu pulled “It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia”. It’s similar to mountaineering, you hear more about the daring rescues than first accents.
A character is not a real human
Always remember to keep things simple – you’re not portraying a real person, even if you’re playing yourself.
A character is a work of art, a metaphor for human nature. We relate to characters as if they were real, but they’re superior to reality. Their aspects are designed to be clear and knowable; whereas our fellow humans are difficult to understand, if not enigmatic. We know characters better than we know our friends because a character is eternal and unchanging, while people shift – just when we thing we understand them, we don’t. In fact, I know Rick Blaine in CASABLANCA better then I know myself. Rick is always Rick. I’m a bit iffy.
- Story: Substance, Structure, Style and The Principles of Screenwriting
We want reality but we don’t want reality. You get the point.
We remember great characters
As humans we’re built to remember people – by sent, facial recognition, etc. So in theory the more you act like a character, the more likely you’ll be remembered and cut through the clutter.
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