Quick social marketing junkies, switch on your iPads, bust out your styli and jot down the name of the next great marketing panacea. For lack of a better term, we call it – Bro-cial Media. But you can call it whatever you want when you present it as your own in your next big client presentation.
The pillars of Bro-cial Media are simple:
- Don’t just know your audience. Be your audience.
- Feed your audience with content that makes them hungry for more.
- Deliver content in a medium your audience likes to consume.
Where, oh where, might you ask did this insight come from? New nonbox client, Connor Martin a.k.a ConBroChill and/or Flowseidon.
This pro lacrosse star, born and raised in the Northwest, is more than a flowing mane with a penchant for the bombastic and a persona that’s part MTV’s Puck Rainey and part Jason Mewes of Jay and Silent Bob fame. This wholesome kid next door is a bonafide digital media sensation.
With YouTube creations constructed using his dad’s video camera, ConBroChill brings as many as 500,000 like-minded sports enthusiasts to him with every three- to five-minute dispatch. This popularity has created a product-pitching hotbed for CBro and his sponsors, as well as opened the door to him as an arena anthem creator and a current spate of possible television projects that nonbox is working on to cement Connor’s place in popular culture.
But let’s make something clear, we’re learning from Connor as much as he’s learning from us, and we’re not afraid to say it. We don’t profess to know all the answers. What Connor has accomplished on his own is amazing, authentic and something we can all learn from as we try to harness the tools available to marketers in the ever-changing media landscape.
So what’s the moral of this local-Bro-makes-good story?
It’s time to quit looking for ways to make a Facebook profile relevant for your company or clients. It’s time to quit pushing Twitter messages out that trumpet how cool you are. Retire big idea thinking for a moment and go Bro-cial.
Here are five tips for integrating Bro-cial Media into your marketing mix as a company or for your clients:
- Develop a persona for your brand. You may not be ConBroChill, but you are somebody. If you don’t know who you are — Ask your coveted audience.
- Live where your prospects, fans, and competitors live. Is it YouTube? Is it LinkedIn? Is it in technology or industry forums or trade pubs? Don’t waste time building communities from scratch. Find out where your Bros are already hanging out.
- Don’t be a witness. Be an activist! Participate. Engage with your bros and give them reasons to want to hang with you.
- Be fresh – in attitude and in your content. Have an edge that reflects your persona in everything you deliver and bring things to your bros that elicit action. Don’t just create for the sake of freshness.
- Encourage frequent interaction with your bros to stay current. Don’t pontificate in a vacuum. Unvalidated clever ideas from you or your marketing cohorts may make you laugh or feel empowered, but if they miss the mark you could end up with something like this flop:
Motrin Moms Mishap from Johnson & Johnson.
Turn your own Flowseidon loose. Let the audience have some say in your brand story. And make some friggin’ noise. Otherwise, no one really gives a shit about what your slinging*
*(unless you’re Steve Jobs. To be like him, you simply need to ignore focus groups, eliminate do nothing committees, develop customer empathy, invest in beautiful marketing, develop a meaningful ad budget and execute flawless product launches).