With the modern Internet, content has taken on a whole new dimension. In the middle of a global financial meltdown, marketers are moving to digital channels because it offers highly targeted, trackable reach to specific audiences at great prices. Throw in the increasingly influential viral impact of social networking and you’ve got a communication channel that can save the company advertising spend in hard times.
But getting noticed is becoming an increasingly tough business and can only be achieved through dedication and great content.
In the 21st century content is consumed at such speed that enough is never enough. Even if your brand has great content that is sought after by readers, Internet users and twitterers, to keep feeding the beast can become an insurmountable challenge. While the user-generated content (UGC) phenomenon can lift the content pressure, in South Africa, we don’t have enough web users to make a niche site viable or sustainable in terms of good UGC.
In today’s social networking and user commentary environment, brands really need to live their image. Information can be consumed over multiple devices, and if you offer people information that actually adds value to their lives, they will be more receptive to your message, and therefore your brand.
What makes producing attractive digital content such an issue is the perceived conflict between digital and real worlds. Great digital content relies on being present and understanding real world communities.
If you want great content for your target audience, you need to understand that audience, you need an authentic presence in that community and you need to know how to speak to them in their language. If you have an authentic presence within a community you will know instinctively how to service it properly.
We recommend the use of an avatar who becomes the specialist and the thought leader for the community, in other words the personality of the brand. This avatar should be represented across the major social networking platforms such as Facebook, Twitter etc. so that it participates in the audience’s social networking environment.
Most importantly, the avatar needs to be managed by a dedicated employee or team, who are empowered to solve problems if they arise. This avatar then becomes the accessible face of your brand.
When we develop avatars for clients, we go through an exercise of determining what the ideal personality would be to service their customers, should she be a sassy sexy blond who services writers, or a conservative accountant who supports decision makers in the financial sector? Then we build the profile from there adding demographics and psychographics to the character and creating a content architecture, which is a framework of the main themes that the avatar will address in order to deliver on its business objectives.
Here is an example, if the main aim of the avatar is to position the company as “An Employer of Choice” then the avatar could be a fictitious senior HR manager, who is attractive, warm and friendly and approachable and who blogs and tweets etc. about employee engagement and what her company is doing for its employees. She will be creating content that the readers can comment on, and if she is skilful, she can start a very meaningful conversation to the company’s benefit, with the kind of employees they wish to attract.
Generally we recommend that the avatar be a cartoon character. Audiences are not stupid and they will immediately recognise a fake blog that is being run by the marketing team. However, if the avatar is a cartoon character the audience will understand that you are not trying to trick them, but rather making a concerted effort to engage them.
Avatars represent a serious and strategic business opportunity for companies to interact and relate to their audiences in a way they never have before.
Kate Elphick
