A Chat with Amir Zonozi
To cut right to the chase, Amir Zonozi is the Chief Strategy Officer for Zoomph – a social media marketing platform focused on real-time streaming analytics.
We recently had the pleasure of sitting through a (rather impressive) demo with his Zoomph colleague Katherine Boufford, and when she mentioned Amir’s hybrid interest in psychology and technology, we couldn’t resist an opportunity to dive deeper into his expertise.
In our conversation, Amir shared his thoughts on user-generated content, how to connect with your audience and the overall role of psychology in social media marketing.
Read what he had to say below (and if you like what you hear, be sure to follow him on Twitter or take a few moments to check out Zoomph on their site).
The tagline for Zoomph is “Real-Time Influence Matters”. Where, in your opinion, are brands missing huge opportunities for real-time interaction?
Context is everything when it comes to connecting with people. In a time where there’s so much noise and content being shared at all times, finding a commonality between you and another person is the best first step to capture their attention.
For brands, connecting with people in real-time when there’s an experience being shared together by brand and audience is that opportunity. Knowing the right person, the right moment and having the right message is the formula for conversion, and all of this begins with having access to data in the moment to make those decisions on how to best leverage your brand during these opportunities.
In continuing to dwell on that tagline, what’s the best way to incorporate influencers into a marketing strategy?
Influencers are incredibly powerful, they are able to translate the benefits of a product or service to audiences that trust their opinion. Incorporating influencers must be authentic and must be contextual.
The number one mistake we see is, marketers seeing a Klout score and thinking that instantly bringing this influencer on board will make an impact. Yes, Kim Kardashian has a massive audiences that listens, but would I listen to her advice on what drone to buy or what phone to buy? No, I would more likely listen to someone like Marques Brownlee or Robert Scoble who focuses on technology.
If I wanted to listen to podcasts on how to build a community, I would listen to Chris Barrows on Why I Social, and if I wanted to get marketing advice, I would engage with Vincenzo Landino on Brandboost.
Brands need to identify who matters to their audience. It has to make sense for that person to be involved with their product. We need to understand why they would recommend it.
You’ve previously stated that social media is “more psychology than it will ever be technology”. How did you come to that conclusion? In what ways has it shaped your online experience?
My background is in psychology, and I used to work at an in-patient clinic where we helped people with behavioral disorders.
With every new patient, we had to find a different way to reason with them, talk to them in a way where they understood what we were saying and could connect with them on a mutual signal.
Social media is a tool that allows you to access large audiences faster than ever before. The notion of creating and shaping a message – then having it resonate and gain a response from a large, diverse audience – is all psychology.
It has shaped how I approach conversations by emphasizing my audience’s mental and emotional state, what message I’m trying to have them walk away with, and what I have to do to make each person happy and inspired.
Are there any psychological methods marketers use that you would consider unethical or manipulative?
I would say anytime a marketer is employing a strategy in which the outcome is not desirable for their audience, it is unethical. Your goal is help your audience, not betray them. My biggest pet peeve is witnessing marketers using fear to drive sales. It’s manipulative.
Describe the most gratifying (or otherwise intriguing) experiment you’ve ever conducted in your professional life.
What you make more observable, also makes it easier to imitate. One of my favorite campaigns is #Birdland with the Baltimore Orioles. The Orioles wanted to engage their audience with a social campaign and encourage their audience to share user-generated content.
The Orioles, like many other baseball teams. would get tons of photos from games where people would snap a picture of the view of their seat at the diamond. This type of content is only interesting to the person who posted the photo, and there isn’t anything the Orioles can do with UGC like that. So we created an Instagram wall to display Instagrams in real-time as people posted their content.
The Orioles only approved images featuring groups of people, friends, couples and family engaging in selfies. Over time, the images of the diamond slowly phased out and were replaced with images of people at the game, having a great time.
The great part about this is that we changed how people engage with Instagram. Usually people snap many photos and upload their best photo with filters and editing. With the #Birdland campaign, fans were posting their photo in real-time and instantly engaging whenever the screen appeared during stoppages of play.
These fans also kept the game day experience on the minds’ of their individual audiences – with similar likes and interests – making them want to go to the game as well. It was a great way to inspire a large audience by highlighting the individuals that represented the desired behavior.
The user experience on Zoomph is very visual. What are some unique, engaging ways people visuals can be incorporated into social output?
User-generated content benefits three people. One, the audience, who get to see what it’s like for a real-person to use a product or service.
Two, the author of the content, who gets rewarded for their loyalty and use of the product with notoriety.
Finally the third person to benefit, the brand, because they get to understand what drives their audience to share. Understanding this provides ways to utilize your audience and scale content quickly.
A great example of this is GoPro, the action camera company which highlights people utilizing their product in interesting ways and has effectively turned their audience into marketers for their brand.
Which brands or individuals have the best online presence? Why?
That’s such a tough subject. You look at the people that are just being totally authentic to who they are and understanding what their audience wants from them.
I’m looking at individuals like Casey Neistat and Gary Vaynerchuk, and they completely understand how to enchant and utilize their audiences. They are maestros in front of an orchestra.
Where do you see social media and technology headed in the next few years? What steps can marketers take to prepare for the changes ahead?
Brands and agencies need to start acting like data companies. Everyone knows we need to be on social, but now it’s time to monitor and understand what you are doing.
Marketers need to understand who their audiences are. What kind of personas engage with your brand? Where is your audience located? What other brands does my audience engage with?
You’re seeing the best marketers already here – executing campaigns and crunching the numbers. They go hand-in-hand.
To wrap things up, what’s one discussion you wish would happen more often in the social media marketing world?
Audience insights. Are you searching for what people are talking about, or are your listening to what your audience is talking about and connecting yourself to those topics?
People will monitor vanity metrics like retweets and likes without paying attention to the bigger narrative – is this engagement from my target audience? There’s too much engagement for the sake of engagement, with no focus on whether the right audience is providing the engagement.
By understanding our audiences better, we can better anticipate what customers and audiences want.
ALSO CONSIDER READING – A Chat with Christine B. Whittemore
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