[Interview] Do you like to be called a consumer asks Daniele Fiandaca, Creative Social

In addition to being on social, brands need to be social. From marketing to innovation, Daniele Fiandaca, Co-Founder, Creative Social debunks myths around creativity on social media.

What does innovation on social media mean to you?

Innovation is finding new and better ways to solve problems. If you look at innovation of things happening in social media, people are looking to monetise what they’re doing. If you sell no one will follow you, if you create content to engage with the audience then there is no reason why you can’t make it easy for them to buy the product

How can you find new ways to help your audience become your salesmen? Amazon created a social share button. It is a good way to create engagement but it’s so dull. Will you post on your social channel – “I just got a book.” It helps sales but it’s boring. How do you make a transaction interesting is innovation. How can I use social behaviour to add value to every touch point for my audience?

What are the things that clients need to keep in mind before creating an innovation brief for their agencies?

For innovation, testing new platforms is important. Don’t put on your agency sales as a target. Pure R & D has to be engagement and more importantly learning and looking at new audiences.

You’re a strong believer of cultural innovation. How can this be achieved through social media marketing?

Everything is not for everyone. If you think that this particular tweet is for all my audiences – you are going to die. You have to make sure that you’re sharing content that will help engage with a particular sect in one day and the next day next sect. People don’t go like they did content not relevant to me – I’m going to un-follow them. That’s not how it works.

Go to a room and ask how many people have actually seen the homepage of BuzzFeed? Very few hands will go up. That is because BuzzFeed has different audiences with different choices. The way they consume content is extremely different. Also, they are redirected to the content through contextual links.
Brands need to stop fixating with the home page. Create content and contextual links around it to make it sharable.

You mentioned that everyone is an innovation officer. How does one become an Innovation Officer in the field of social media?

Do stuff. Unless you don’t experiment you won’t understand your capabilities.

Where does social media stand in the scheme of things at Creative Social?

For us it all begins with people. Do you like to be called a consumer? For me the best work social media, advertising or design, is truly understanding people and what motivates them