Fall 2009 has been a fascinating one for narrative endeavors on social media, three high-profile gaming experiments stand out as the vanguard of both social media and branded entertainment. Valemont by MTV and Verizon, Circle of 8 by MySpace and Paramount Digital are each standout examples of narrative storytelling rolling out utilizing social media to tell its story, create fan communities and market products.
Valemont is a webseries whose driving platform is television, first airing as Two minute thirty second spots during commercial breaks for MTV’s The Hills and The City. Valemont artfully utilized an alternate reality game (ARG) through the website, www.valemontu.com, to create a fictional world. Where their greatest achievement lies is in inviting viewers to enter that world and play along within the narrative. Creating a centralized online forum, Valemont Commons, a where fans pretended to be part of the story and worked together to create events and solve the ARG’s mysteries was essential to Valemont’s success. The game led participants to Facebook using a quiz application to drive users to a Facebook community and to further identify themselves within the narrative.  Utilizing Facebook , a robust fan community fostered by the property’s online team who masqueraded as fictional characters, grew and after three months has thousands of active members, fan fiction, and spinoff groups created by fans themselves. Valemont is currently being considered for a second season, this time televised completely by MTV Networks. The social media groups already in place have helped put pressure on MTV but regardless of whether or not it becomes a TV show, new content is going to be created in the fictional universe by fans.

Circle of 8 is a movie released in ten parts on MySpace video will be released in 2010 on DVD exclusively through Blockbuster Inc. Circle of 8’s social media presence is undeniable, with over 100,000 MySpace friends. Yielded from promotions on MySpace’s front page and other traditional online advertisements, traffic has been driven to the movie and its associated products from Green Label Studios (Mountain Dew) and Kia. The question that Circle of 8’s rollout asks is why its fans are not as active on forums or groups as Valemont? The fan community surrounding Circle of 8 is participates less actively than that of Valemont, this is likely because it lacked a fan-interaction campaign like Valemont implemented. Complimenting the movie were a variety of branded flash games, contests and trivia games that led fans to clues in the movie’s mystery but did not support personal interaction, nor did it create a fictional space for the audience to play in. More interaction with fans has certainly created a more involved fanbase for Valemont but since Circle of 8’s story is self-contained the bottom line may be that the creators aren’t looking to expand the story into a sequel but rather are testing the waters for future project rollouts.

Narrative and social media are logical match, driving the creating of social communities and giving venues for marketing that are more subtle and palatable to audience members than traditional advertisements. These two narrative rollouts show the possibilities that are just beginning to be explored in the union of storytelling and social media platforms.

Caitlin Burns is a Transmedia Producer and Editorial Lead at Starlight Runner Entertainment. To read more analysis on Circle of 8 and Valemont, read her article in Multichannel News: The Next Wave in Branded Entertainment.

I did a presentation at my full-time job last week about the importance of social media and what it means to our business, a marketing agency (BIGSHOT). Everyone thought it was a great and informative presentation and I thought I’d share what I offered.

Here’s the video I showed as an introduction:

Twitter:
http://twitter.com/BIGSHOTmktg
Free micro-blogging website where users can only post updates (or “tweets”) of 140 characters or less. Good for promoting website links, coupons, and specials. Has grown from 1.6m to 32.1m users just in the last year.

Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/bigshotKC
The most popular social networking/media site, where anyone with a valid email address can join for free. Separated into networks of schools (high school and colleges/universities), companies (they have to apply for their own network), and cities (usually only metros and capitol cities, as of now). Now has over 250m monthly active users (as of July 2009), with 120m users logging on at least 1x/day. The fastest growing demographic is adults ages 35+.

MySpace:
Like Facebook, except MySpace offers the ability to completely customize profiles. Bands, Businesses, and Individuals all have profiles, there are no pages. Monthly page views have decreased over 20% in the last year, from 47.4b to 38b. Focus is on music, video, and celebrities.

LinkedIn:
For professionals; focused on business and career networking. Their slogan is “Relationships Matter.”  Had 43m registered users in over 200 countries as of July 2009. Profile focus is on job experience, skill set, what the user is looking for, and recommendations (references) from other contacts.

Why Should You Care?
In the last year, social media has become one of the most influential components of the web. Because of it, newspaper readership has been steadily declining, about 10% from April 2008 to April 2009, according to comscore (during that same time period, online newspaper readership increased 5%). Studies show that internet users also let social media affect their online shopping choices.

More Resources:

• “Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter Statistics”
• “On Twitter, Most People Are Sheep”
• “Compete: Facebook US Traffic Nearing Google, Yahoo”
• “Lollapalooza Tracks Social Media”
• “The Future of Newspapers: Who Killed the Newspaper?”
• “What the Horizon Realty Fail Can Teach You About Social Media”

Headline image from: http://blog.host1plus.com

Sigh. According to Gigaom, MySpace has introduced an e-mail feature to their users, who will receive an “@myspace.com” email address. While I applaud MySpace for attempting to introduce new features for their users, I highly doubt that this will make an impact on the level of catching up they have to do in order to even begin competing again against Twitter and Facebook (and even LinkedIn) in terms of members.

When Facebook was introduced, it became painfully clear that it was going to be a tall competitor against MySpace. While MySpace allows users to customize their layout and background, it is the monotony of this that draws people to Facebook. Most students and adults are not attracted to animated, sparkling .gifs and offensive backgrounds all over their screen. To put it bluntly, Facebook is popular because it is simple. It does not try to offer everything to everyone all at once. It knows its niche and has stayed there.

As Facebook grew in popularity amongst college students (and eventually high schoolers), MySpace became desperate. They began to market themselves as a music site and even created their very own record label. While this may be a good strategy for someone who wants to change their demographic, MySpace was simply marketing to anyone who would listen. Unfortunately, this turned off the general public, who realized that the predetermined fields and networks that comprised Facebook were just what they were looking for.

Instead of re-centering their marketing strategy in the first place, MySpace has now become an afterthought for most of the general public (especially since Facebook is now open to anyone 13 and up who has an e-mail address).

And this is why MySpace (and MySpace email) also needs to become an afterthought for you and your company’s internet marketing strategy. In order for your business to become successful, you need to concentrate on what your target market is concentrating on.

However, it’s important to remember that simply targeting a communication medium, such as social media, isn’t going to make you successful. It is the integration of social media into everything else that you do. For example, have noticeable icons on your organization’s homepage that offer a direct link to your Facebook and Twitter profiles. Use Twitter and Facebook to promote sales, offer coupons and giveaways, and receive feedback from your customer base. Make the experience that users have by friending or following you be a fun one.

In order to stay ahead of social media trends, it’s important to understand what your target market is and what they are doing online before simply trying to catch up before it is too late (*cough* MySpace *cough*).

–

Kelsey Childress is a Search Marketing Specialist and owns her own freelance business, Awen Creative. She is the creator of The Social Robot.

Image Courtesy of MySpace Tour Site

As reported by SearchEngineWatch.com, a new engagement index calculated by The Wetpaint/Altimeter Group is debunking some myths about social media, for example that it can’t be measured or that it doesn’t work in B2B environments. It also reveals that companies who’ve invested in social media are weathering the recession better.

The study looks at the depth of involvement of the top 100 global brands in various social media channels in an attempt to measure the true value of social media. Customized criteria were used to score each company’s involvement in social media channels including blogs, branded social communities, discussion forums,  social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, Wikis, and content distribution sites. The highest ranking company was Starbucks, which uses 11 channels and employs a social media team of six people. By comparison, #2 ranking Dell spreads social media responsibilities around to all employees, who spend 15-20 minutes a day sharing their thoughts on Twitter and personal blogs.

Although the engagement index reveals a significant correlation between social media involvement and financial performance, don’t expect social media to be a magic solution for disappointing second-quarter profits. Engagement takes time, and the quality of your social media campaigns is critical when it comes to building relationships with your customers and earning their trust — which is, after all, what social media is all about.

More key findings from the study:

• Focus on quality over quantity. Engaging deeply in one or two channels is preferable to skimming the surface of several.
• Keep content fresh and respond to comments;  customers want companies that engage with them.
• Make social media a part of everyone’s job, from the CEO on down. A few minutes a day from all employees adds up.
• Tailor your social media campaigns to your industry. Luxury automotive brands such as Mercedes-Benz and Porsche engage in just two channels each. If your target audience doesn’t depend on social media, certain channels may not be right for you.
• Do something. You don’t have to do it all, but you must start somewhere, or risk being left behind as consumers become more dependent on social media.

Read the full study here (PDF).