John S. Wolfe

This is the first of a series of reports about the Social Media Marketing 2010 conference, held June 17 in London.

The crowd was enthusiastic, the insights valuable and the accents a bit different but the 2010 Social Media Marketing event in London on June 17 offered unique insights into how UK professionals perceive digital media.

The day-long affair in Oxford Circus was organized by Luke Brynley-Jones, co-founder and director of Influence People, and featured a rapid-fire cascade of 15 topics and speakers.

The topics ranged from the emergence of “nicheworks” and understanding individual influences to case studies involving social media promotions, to concrete tips to be more effective on websites, Twitter, and YouTube.

A crowd of 200 at the Cavendish Conference Centre in London.

One of the first speakers was Richard Sedley, director of customer engagement for cScape, which engages customers through surveys.

He focused his remarks on the psychology of persuasion, not to manipulate people in an unethical manner but to better understand behaviors and influences.

The ideas could inspire a customer to comply with a request and then repeat the behavior.

The approach features three segments:

1. Objects
2. Kairos (timing)
3. Design

“Objects are the things you pass on to someone, why people connect,” he said. These can be physical objects or information or entertainment or a courtesy.

One of his perceptions is that people will only pass on an object if it makes them look good, he said.

The biggest social object now is the World Cup. “We’re interested in what others think,” he said.

The best object is storytelling. “There’s no defense for an opinion,” he said.

Anyone can tell a story. Show a photo from a band’s last concert and talk about it. Share an opinion on a first, a last, a best or a rarest. Describe a sequence of cause-and-effect, A leads to B. People tend to listen.

Marketing is storytelling. And the good elements to a story are a passion (why should your customers care), a hero, an antagonist who challenges the hero, awareness (when the hero learns how to overcome obstacles) and transformation, when the hero accomplishes his goal.

“The trick is to use other people’s stories for realism,” Sedley said.

Richard Sedley discusses the psychology of persuasion.

Kairos (timing) is everything.

He offered a couple of examples.

In one, the object is a bag of chips. If a person buys it from a street vendor and starts to nibble on the chips, it’s not a social object.

“But buy it in a pub, and open it outwards to the people around you, it becomes a social object, something to be shared,” he said.

He then showed a photo of an alley near a nursery. Passers-by were using it as a dump.

The nursery’s first sign asked people “please do not dump your rubbish here.” It didn’t work.

The second sign warned that litterers would be prosecuted. That didn’t work.

The third sign threatened emotional blackmail: “Please don’t dump your rubbish. Children play here.” It didn’t work either.

Finally, the nursery put up a sign with a map to the town’s dump. It worked.

“Social psychology reveals that there’s a key moment to influence behaviors,” he said. “Timing is everything.”

Persuasion works on individuals when they are in a good mood and when they can take action, he emphasized.

Last, Sedley urged marketers to design a process that encourages the behaviors you want.

“Facebook does this with its ‘Like’ and ‘Keep in touch’ buttons,” he said. Of course, the social network can use this information to help the user – and better define his or her profile to advertisers.

Sedley is not sold on Foursquare just yet; the location-based network uses “badges” to reward participants. In his opinion, these badges do not qualify as social objects.

How this all relates to social media is that individuals use networks like Facebook and Twitter for “mental shortcuts.”

“It’s social proof,” he said. “If you are given evidence that something is a good thing, it’s easy to pass on.”

For marketers, it is important to understand the idea of reciprocity: If you give something, you are likely to get something back.

But watch the context.

Sedley posed two scenarios: Fill something out and you get this white paper. Or, give the white paper and then ask for the individual’s contact information to provide future white papers.

“You are more likely to get someone to fill out the information through the latter,” he said.

The key thing is to design behaviors you wish to encourage.

“Effective communication is the exchange of a social object at a particular moment that can be predicted through behaviors,” Sedley concluded.