In the world of online PR, ’social currency’ is a word that comes up a lot. It’s generally used to describe content that a PR might try to engage a blogger with, in the hope of encouraging that blogger to write about a brand, product or service.
This content could come in the form of new product information, a video, interesting images, or simply news. Pretty straight forward right? But I get asked time and time again – “why is it called social currency?, what is social currency?”
This morning, I was thinking about how best to explain the concept, when I received an email telling me that a couple I know had broken up. This was pretty big news, because they were “that couple” – the couple that had been together for ever, and who outwardly looked unbreakable. Now, I hate to publicly admit this, but on receiving this email, I emailed some friends to share with them this shocking news. By lunchtime, I had also received the ‘news’ from six different sources; it seemed that everyone knew.
Now there is actually a reason that I deviate onto this slightly embarrassing admission. The news of the break up was effectively “social currency”. Not only did the information capture the interest of the people to whom it was told, but those people immediately used that information to ‘fund’ more conversations.
In a perfect world, all ’social currency’ should be this effective. Not only should the content that is given to bloggers and online influencers be able to interest them, it should actually make people reading that particular blog post, or Twitter post, want to re-blog it, or retweet it, or just tell someone else!
Just something to think about, next time you want to “engage some bloggers!”
image: http://arunrajagopal.com/2007/12/
One Comment
Posted November 17, 2009 at 12:43 pm | Permalink
Great read, you can always learn something new about forex!