With Apple enabling adblockers in their latest iOs, the desire to create authentic consumer interest and engagement in marketing material shared online has essentially become a requirement. Marketers as hackers and pirates was never that attractive an idea anyway, but now we know for sure: we need to learn how to tell stories that people want to hear, share images and videos that people want to see. Unsurprisingly, one of the key ways to make this happen is to include the very people you're trying to attract in the story itself. If television was the medium of mass dissemination, the internet is pretty obviously a tool of mass participation. 

What was once sidelight for many brands —inviting the public to participate in contributing-to or shaping your branded messages—has now become daily business. We thought it might be a good idea to look at how this is being done, and who is doing it most effectively.

Approaches to Boosting Engagement

There's more than one good way to encourage audience participation when it comes to your brand. Briefly, these are some of the most effective methods to approach consumer engagement and inspire fans to help create fresh content:

• Directly Ask for Participation: The most obvious tactic for creating engagement. But the "join the conversation" concept, along with "#hastagaboutourthing" have both become perhaps a little over-familiar. Shapeless appeals like these need to be rethought. The key questions for any invitation to participate have to be answered:
  • What's in it for me?
  • What do you want me to to contribute?
• Establish a Creative Connection: Even better: how about letting the customers take part in the creative process? Whether that means sharing a fan-made video on Facebook or asking for new product ideas on Twitter, establishing a creative connection humanizes your brand by placing your brand-equity on an equal standing with your customers. Using a creative crowdsourcing platform is another path for this.  American Girl recently used creative crowd-sourcers Tongal to not only develop screenplays for their "BeForever" Maryellen doll, but also to cast Maryellen and shoot the full 16 minute film. In cases like this, the entire process builds a following and an appetite for the final product.
• Spark Curiosity: Piquing the public's curiosity can also be accomplished through unconventional marketing campaigns that apply cross-medium efforts to create multiple layers of interest. For instance, revealing clues or hints regarding a mysterious aspect of your campaign via different social channels can send consumers searching on Google or Twitter to find out the answer to a mystery — or, even better — to see just what the heck is going on. Using this technique, the key is designing a story line that can stay "open," which is a new story-telling discipline for most marketers (who usually love to have all the answers before they start).

Turning Engagement into Social Media Marketing Gold

Consumer engagement can function as your very own social media goldmine . Fans and consumers can offer a near-infinite wealth of creativity and can act as a valuable source of ingenuity and new perspectives; their input can energize your online presence or your brand's overall message. Furthermore, inclusion of customers in your marketing conversation can create low or no-cost marketing content on social media at the hands of your most passionate brand advocates. Some of the major benefits of the user-generated content produced by highly-engaged fans include:

• Building Trust: For almost any brand, there are narratives that are more credible (and often funnier, more involving, more dramatic) when they're being delivered by your customers. The easiest way to find those storylines is to establish and maintain an ongoing content-driven dialogue with your customers.
• Increasing Loyalty: Ongoing engagement solidifies bonds with existing brand advocates. Creating experiences that customers choose to opt-in for helps create genuine communities associated with your brand or product.
• Strengthening Online Presence: The more fans who create and share content, the more your influence will grow across social media channels. When consumers bring new ideas and fresh content to the picture, brands become more prolific, relevant, and (the new holy grail) authentic.
• Authenticity: Online and off — more customers involved in discussion or activity about your brand means your brand becomes more authentic. Of course this is magic and cannot be explained — but there's no arguing that it's true.

A Few Examples of Engagement Done Right

Lay's “Do Us a Flavor": Contests are always an awesome way to get the public involved in your campaign—especially when creativity is required to win. By encouraging fans to think up and share their ideas for delicious new chip flavors on social media, Lay's offered a fun invitation to join in the brand's creative process. Check this Tongal "gallery" for more examples of great contest-driven video.

MLB and Apple's “#iPadGuy": The unexplained airtime given to iPad Guy during the recent MLB playoff season managed to redirect some viewers' attention away from the game and over to Twitter in search of answers. At times, the #iPadGuy hashtag was visible on his jersey, but often he was shown staring at his iPad without context. Repetitive exposure without explanation led to many viewers seeking iPad Guy out on social media. 

Kayak.com's “Frank": The Frank Reardon saga is a high-level example of how deeply fans can be drawn into a brand's storyline. Like iPad Guy, Frank was interesting because he blurred the lines between fictional character in a marketing campaign and an actual person in the real world. By combining digital marketing with commercial ads and video responses from the real-life Frank, Kayak created the perfect recipe for unsolicited social media engagement. Viewers felt compelled to discover more about Frank and, in turn, Kayak.com. 

The Play's The Thing...

Engagement with your customers and fans is a critical tool for today's marketers—whether in the form of interactions on social media, brand advocacy, or contributing to the creation of content for your campaign. If you can playfully draw people into your campaign, you can develop brand advocates who are both willing to represent your brand and share your content.

Including input from the public often allows a brand to become funnier, looser, and more authentic in their advertising. Just remember that inspiration can work both ways: if you can entice fans to produce content for your brand, it might also lead you to something that inspires other consumers. Who knows? You may lose complete control of the message...and that might be a very good thing indeed.