Memes as Strategy

Cats and Babies
a content strategy for our
social media age

Tyler Fonda
Strategy Director | Gotham, Inc.
@tylerfonda

Wednesday, February 27, 13

We believe that social media is something to care desperately
about. Doing it right requires experimentation, honesty and a
healthy distrust of “Best Practices.”

Our conviction that we can create our own best practices allows
us to create social experiences that consumers love.


meme
noun
a cultural item that is transmitted by repetition in a
manner analogous to the biological transmission of
genes.

Origin:
1976; < Gk mīmeîsthai to imitate, copy; coined by
R. Dawkins, Brit. biologist


memes are the currency of social


it starts with pattern recognition


then we made our case to Denny’s

• 300,000 fans in 2011 was not enough

• We weren’t growing faster than our competition

• We would only fall farther and farther behind

• Shifting attention would only make social more important


Some rights reserved by ilmungo


so we went from this


to this


before and after
15 600000
11.25 450000
7.5 300000
3.75 150000
0 0
Top Virality Post % Facebook Likes

400000 10000
300000 7500
200000 5000
100000 2500
0 0
Highest Post Reach Average Weekly Growth
2011 2012

• The
Newsfeed
is all that
matters


it came down to understanding
Edgerank

by Arenamontanus


afﬁnity
• How “friendly” you are with a user
• The closer you are, the more you appear in the newsfeed

edge weight
• Highest weight: Photos, videos, and links
• More likes on a post increases its edge weight

recency
• Time decay
• Newer items appear more often than older items


in simple terms

In order to increase your Edgerank, you have to make people
WANT to like, comment, click, and share your posts. Sharing
is the most valuable activity you can do on Facebook.

The most effective way to get shares and engagement is to
have compelling content AND lots of it.


Brands are responses to the world around us. We
weren’t satisﬁed talking, because it wasn’t responsive.
So we became a curator to SHOW the world what our
brand is built on.

In Denny’s case it is easy conversation.


We optimize through experimentation. We don't know exactly
what works till we try. However because every post is tagged
by content type once we ﬁnd types and times that work we are
able to maximize our Edgerank.


memes became our trojan horse


Facebook believes those who saw
Denny’s content before, will like what
they see next. So our brand messages
got huge boosts in reach.


let’s compare
The top 5 brands on Facebook have
between a 0.5 - 2% PTAT rate. PTAT is the
key to unlocking success on Facebook.
0.9%

1.9%

1.8%

1.2%

0.8%


denny’s had a 15% PTAT rate*

* Averaged this rate from March 2012-September 2012

When they share, your reach skyrockets. When your reach
expands, you acquire more likes. It’s all a part of a cycle,
and we’ve ﬁgured out how to utilize it.


or so we thought

Towards the end of the 3rd quarter Facebook changed its algorithm
and with the launch of Graph Search I think I know why it
changed.


eliminate facebook dependency
“I’m against sponsored posts being
the primary, if not the only way to
reach most of the people my
companies have built a connection
with on FB.”

-Mark Cuban


we’re becoming creators

By taking what we learned in 2012 about our customer and how we
think we understand how content percolates through the social
web.


tumblr is our epicenter


in conclusion
We are attempting to build a long term social platform at
Denny’s that does not rely solely upon media spend to
maintain interest.

Memes are how we transmit our brand values across
networks and to potential customers. They are the perfect
vehicle if used properly.


thanks

http://youmeandmyapi.com
tyler.fonda@gothaminc.com


Memes as Strategy

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