[caption id="attachment_164" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Gratuitous photo of my son playing"]
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Often when you look at an individual or a brand’s social channels, what you don’t see is more striking than what you do see. They can be doing everything right, and still be missing something incredibly important to social interaction and social development. Below is a Talk from TEDx Bulgaria by Steve Keil that we watched at Reno Collective’s Lunch With Ted today that details, among other things, the importance of play in the social development of a culture.
Social media is an extension of our real-life social persona. But it is also a wholly different ecosystem compared to the face-to-face world where we need to develop new relationships and new ways of interacting. Combine that with an interesting fact I read yesterday in an article in Fast Company titled, “On The Comedy-Rich Web, An Elite Group Of Dramas Break Through, These Are Their Stories [CHU-CHUNG!]”
You’re way more likely to see a funny clip shared on your news feed than a scripted original series–52% of video uploads are posted on social media sites and 93% of 18-29-year-olds watch “comedy or humorous videos,” according to Pew Internet research (drama didn’t even appear on the list).I like the definition of Comedy on Wikipedia: “any humorous discourse generally intended to amuse.” So people are sharing and consuming comedy videos, or videos that are a form of digital social play. That article goes on to surmise why comedy is so popular in social channels:
That’s because, “We’re still not at a place where people are counting on the Internet for all forms of video entertainment,” says David-Michel Davies, executive director of the Webby Awards.That may or may not be true. If it is, it isn’t surprising that comedy is leading the way in this new social video content culture. Play is how we break the ice. While social media is not new, it is growing fast which means that at any one time many of the people interacting on social channels are new to it. In our experience, it is an important and effective social content strategy to inject a little amusement, frivolity or off-topic randomness, into your social media content and interaction. It is more effective way to build a community, and a hell of a lot more fun to follow a trajectory of amusement, inquisitiveness and curiosity rather than rigid, brand-focused, ROI-mappable communication. What do you do to keep play important in your social media community? What people, or brands do you think are doing this well?
- What do I do? one word, Bacon.
- And one of my favorite examples of a brand playing in their space is the blog for the dating site Okcupid.