Promote Whatever the Hell You Want, Just Make it Interesting
Too much is said about the ulterior motives of some of the submissions on social media sites. From time to time, great content has been called out by people in the community as being “spam” simply because it has a commercial agenda. To me it seems like judging a piece of content based on what its creator hopes to gain is pretty much on par with boycotting a movie because you don’t want the director to make any money. The bottom line is that if you find the content interesting, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to go around complaining about what’s going to happen as a result. Quality is quality and you might as well just enjoy it.
This isn’t to say that there’s not a huge amount of stuff being promoted that is both weak and heavily commercial, it’s just to point out that commercial doesn’t always equal bad. I for one, will never get tired of watching Terry Tate level an unsuspecting colleague.
So, in that vein, here are a few pieces of content I’ve come across (or been “force-fed”) over the past several months that I’d never have found if it hadn’t been for some savvy company leveraging social media to deliver me a subtle advertisement which I happily consumed.
Despite seeing this a little over a year ago, it still resonates as a great example of what you can do with a relatively straightforward product and a lot of creativity. Thule is probably best known for their ski and bike racks, and–through what must have been some brilliant brainstorming–decided to remake everyone’s favorite elementary school classic The Oregon Trail as modern road trip across the country. The result is an ingenious game that has minimal ties to their product line, but does a considerable amount toward branding their product. Also, it’s a lot of fun.
How Long Could You Survive Chained to a Bunk Bed with a Velociraptor?
Easily the most bizarre of the four, this amusing quiz showed that with a little ingenuity you can take a topic as boring as bunk beds and just add a carnivorous dinosaur to the equation. It’s another great example of a company providing light-hearted content that helps distinguish their brand, but also offers a bit of fun for a huge amount of people that have absolutely no need to ever buy their product.
Salary Madness – 2008 March Madness Predictions By the Dollars
When the NCAA tournament brackets were announced back in March of this year, PayScale, a salary information resource, had the idea of using some of their data to forecast the tourney based on the median salaries of the school’s graduates. Since there’s a natural curiosity surrounding how much money people make, this was a great way for them to capitalize on something that was topical while also showcasing the core strength of their service. It hardly matters that the site itself offers subscriptions, because this was a quick piece of content that could be enjoyed without even taking the time to find out what it is they do.
With some incredibly successful linkbait and an increasing notoriety among social media communities, the dating site Mingle2 has gotten a decent amount of flack from some users that apparently object to having anything they’re looking at tied in with a service they don’t want to subscribe to. Here’s one user’s comment on the Eight Phases of Dating comic:
Admittedly, this one was harsher than most, but it does show the unwarranted disdain some people have for all things commercial. Contrast that with the similarly themed XKCD comic, that will likely receive little flack because it has no specific call to action on the page.
It seems as if many users don’t typically equate sites that rely on ad revenue as having just as much of a commercial interest as those promoting a product or service, and Digg has even gone as far as banning some retail driven websites altogether.
It’s probably not the most mind blowing take away, but it’s hard to look at the above pieces of content and say they don’t have some entertainment value as a stand-alone from the product or service they’re promoting. There’s no reason why each piece of content shouldn’t be judged on its own merit. Anyone should be more than welcome to promote their content across whatever social media sites they choose, they just need to be damn sure they make it interesting enough to stand on its own, because if it’s linked to a commercial site then it’s going to be an uphill battle.
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