I have a habit of clipping case studie I find that fit within the Scatter, Gather, Matter framework. You can actually see all of these on my Delicious account.
A recent one that I found that is in the vein of the Old Spice campaign is a set of personalised videos from Ford. Here’s a small sample:
Showcase Strategy
If scattering your message is about pushing it everywhere and anywhere, gathering your message is about uniting people together and pulling them into the same place.
One way to do gather people is quite literally to showcase them – to put them in the show – as it not only gets their interest and participation by the virtue that you have showcased them, but they will also bring their crowd with them to watch them perform.
Reproducing This
We don’t all have a budget to create videos talking to individual people. But we can involve people quite easily in what we do. The most basic form is a tweet about someone else or a blog post highlighting someone else’s work. Taking this deeper, we can actually ask people to contribute to our production. I learnt this when running a youth organization and quickly realising that when I asked bands to play, they brought their fans. Not only that, but when I asked young people to volunteer and be part of the organisation, they brought their friends to watch what they had made.
The trick really is to ask yourself “how can I involve someone else in this?”, from the small parts right up to the big parts. If you sell paper as a B2B business, for instance, you could showcase a business by naming a particular product after them because they buy so much of it, or asking them to demo a new product for a week free of charge and video what they think of it.
Social Media is supposed to be about co-creation, but we regularly find ego takes over and thus the blog becomes about the blogger, the show about the producer, and the church about the preacher. If we can lay down our ego and seek not to be interesting to be interested, then we can begin seeing the fruits of showcasing individuals.
Your Leading Thoughts
- Why is showcasing so rare? Is it that when we showcase one individual we alienate others?
- How practically do you showcase others?
P.S. I explain Showcase and two other social strategies in this article.
Archived Comments
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http://twitter.com/alexthegreen
I found qype is quite a good way of doing this, it enables people to tell their stories as anonymously or publicly as they like and it makes them feel they are contributing.
I even wrapped my page in a subdomain to help people – http://review.alexgreen.co.uk/
It’s basic but seemingly effective, people are already coming in having read reviews, then wanting to share their own. -
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Totally! Love this example – impressed with your reviews BTW
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http://gearboxmagazine.com
OOh! I wasn’t sure where you were headed with this (can’t hit the Youtubes from work), but you finished strongly with something in which I strongly believe.
It’s hard for me to posit why showcasing is so rare, as it’s been at the center of my online activities for 15 months, now. I’d tend to agree with you that it’s an ego thing for many. After all, the essence of the blog is sharing one’s opinions, so if those opinions draw an audience, isn’t that reinforcement of self-worth? Paging Ego to the white courtesy phone!
Our core focus at Gearbox is interviewing others, sharing their stories, publishing their opinions on the issues directly affecting our community. With so many people sharing across social technologies these days, it can be easy for some voices to get lost in the din.
We simply give individuals a moment in the spotlight to introduce themselves, share the high and low points of their journeys, and get their voices heard over the others, one at a time. We’re trying to make responsibility, effort, and “doing it right” more popular, hopefully inspiring conversations surrounding what works, how it works, and why it works, all while gently suggesting we’re all part of a diverse, global community without boundaries.
The things we have in common make it easier for us to accept (even understand) our differences. As gearheads, we generally come together in pursuit of building high performance machines, but our goal at Gearbox is to empower people to build high performance lives.
It’s my life’s work, actually.
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OK! That’s a blog post right there!
May I repost this tomorrow?
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http://gearboxmagazine.com
Uh, what? Really? How could I say no to that?
Of course, Scott. Wow.
Day == made.
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