What’s Your Social Currency?

What if you’re a multimillionaire and you never even knew about it?

As marketers, we’re forever trying to create something. Be it market positioning or the next big campaign, we’re always working on something new. We’re just wired that way.

And as social media platforms are going into overdrive to minimize the time between content consumed and purchase made, we’re hurtling into a space where content drives conversion.

This led to the coining of the term “social currency” – in other words, the reach of your social media influence, or the extent to which your content gets shared. Which means the higher your reach, the better it is for your objectives – whether it’s conversions, awareness, or engagement.

It’s like this – if you’re a solo iPhone owner, it’s not much different from owning any other phone. But as your friends and colleagues switch to iPhones, the more value you gain out of your phone via Facetime, iMessage, etc.

At the end of the day, social currency is a measure of how far your word of mouth travels. In other words, great content that’s also insanely shareable will trigger a tidal wave that grows and gathers momentum from across your networks.

How do you go from social currency to social wealth?

Here are top three things you can do to get your social cash registers ringing.

Focus on value and relevance

The trick here is to stubbornly focus on what value you can offer your customers that no one else can. Only if you share truly extraordinary content that’s a cut above the rest can you hope for people to keep sharing it. If you can’t think of anything immediately, don’t worry – that’s how a majority of brands start out.

A great way to find your hidden awesomeness is to showcase your product in a use case. Doing something that’s so out-of-the-box that it shatters expectations of normal. While enticing the audience with something they wouldn’t have ever thought of. For instance, high-street fashion brand Burberry’s crowd-sourced montage website, “Art of the Trench,” garnered hits running into millions, besides triggering a 50% increase in sales.

Offer your audience a sneak inside peek

Sample some of your fans and users into a a select group. Or, give them access to something exclusive makes people feel more important and special. It not only makes people appreciate your product or service more, it also urges them to spread the word about it.

Incentivize, but not overly so

Many brands offer monetary incentives for friend referrals and other advocacy activities. Granted, money never hurt anybody. And, it sure as hell works more often than not. But it may also turn out more expensive than expected (most companies need not even have the option). Another disadvantage is that with money involved, the quality and cadece of referrals starts depending on it. Not on actual connect with the value. People talk about products they love every single day, for free – whether in person or via social media.

There’s no set rulebook you can follow to increase social currency; every brand is remarkable in its own right. However, you can gain social currency if you apply a dash of creativity with a pivot of personalisation to your content marketing game.