Stiles on Content: Online Voting Makes Public the Judge | Extreme ...

Mike Stiles

Online voting is nothing new.? What is new is the degree to which social is extending and ingraining the online voting concept.? This has all kinds of implications for content strategies, 99% of which are positive.

Allowing fans and followers to vote on an outcome accomplished many of the things you want your content to accomplish.? It?s fun.? It gets the fan personally invested.? It empowers the fan and makes them feel valued.? It deepens engagement.? It gives fans a reason to care since they are driving the results.? While some of the most effective posts have always posed questions, there?s something about online voting affecting an actual outcome that turbo-charges the brand/fan relationship.

Recently, the MTV Movie Awards allowed viewers, for the first time ever, to vote using Twitter hashtags on the new ?Best Hero? category. ?That was the only category in which live social voting was allowed, but registered users could also weigh in on other categories on the MTV Movie Awards site.? The network played off the fact that fans are ready, willing and able to actively support and promote their favorite celebrities and films.

While it doesn?t necessarily involve voting, brands are getting into the habit of connecting to their customers in ways that go far beyond the marketing and purchasing of products.? Procter & Gamble reaches out to the public for active participation in product innovation through their Connect + Develop initiative.? In a sense, they are able to influence or ?vote? on new products by submitting ideas of their own, or suggesting improvements to either existing products or submitted innovations.

Where else can this passion for online social voting go?? Many programs utilise the formula in which expert/celebrity judges render decisions on who stays and who goes on reality competition shows.? Why are these judges needed?? The answer is, they?re not. ?While they may be useful for star power, we?ll probably see a day when results are entirely or mostly delivered by viewer votes.? The judges? role would switch to using their expertise to influence viewers to vote one way or another.

Will we one day be choosing our elected officials through social voting?? Probably not.? But we can certainly already put up public non-binding referendums that would be enormously compelling to voters who want to make their voices and opinions heard on a given issue.? When you consider that vocal constituents do influence and sway the way elected officials vote, this use of social online voting could grow compellingly powerful.

So what?s the application of social online voting for B2B marketers?? As I?ve often said, what we very often fail to realise in B2B marketing is that even though we are marketing to other businesses, those businesses are comprised of human beings, subject to the same traits and tendencies as a public audience might be.? At Vitrue, there has been a company history of listening intently to what our clients tell us they need and letting that drive our product rollouts and upgrades.

With social online voting, you can easily facilitate this kind of client and prospect feedback on your products and services.? Never underestimate how engaging and attention-getting it is to be included as part of the process.? If I?m a business and mostly get curated or retweeted content from another business, that?s pretty easy to skim over without giving it much thought.? But if that business is asking me to participate in a decision they?re trying to make in an effort to demonstrably improve their product or service, I?m going to appreciate being asked.? And I?m probably going to take the time to render my opinion as a present or future potential user of that product I?m now helping to craft.

Your focus groups are readily available to you, provided you?re ready to accept and act on what they tell you.? Reaching out in this way, with this kind of content, will reap you rewards in terms of deeper, more genuine relationships between your brand and your target audiences.

About the Author

Mike Stiles is a content specialist with Vitrue, the leading social relationship management technology platform in the industry.? He is also the author of ?Showtime: Brands as Content Producers.?

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