Last week, one of my friends shared a TV commercial on Facebook. His advice was: “Don’t miss it. It is really cool.” I pondered why some would change the TV channel to avoid watching the TV commercials while a friend of mine encourages his social network to watch a TV commercial on Facebook. It seems that he acts as a spy for the producer of the commercial. I know that he does not work for this company. But the question is what drives him to share this TV commercial with his social network?

Sharing interesting videos, information, links has been a worldwide trend specially through social media. For example, people use YouTube to share their videos, Wikipedia to share their knowledge and Flicker to share photos. The main function of social media is the facilitation of interaction and communication among its users. This has created a great opportunity for marketers to use social media marketing. Social media is a new phenomenon while most of the marketing experts are from an elder generation. Most of the marketers consider the social media as an instrument to send out the traditional commercials. Social media are seen only as a medium. But the advertiser of the TV commercial sent by my friend seems to be aware of the this fact. 

Social media need more in depth knowledge to be understood. I think, social media can be compared to a democratic system in which members want to be involved in the society. They want to play a role, be heard and be seen. I think this character of involvement motivated my friend to share this video. In the commercial you can see how a group settled by the advertiser start dancing in a train station. Suddenly, some of the daily commuters join this group. Afterwards, it seems all train commuters are dancing in the train station. The advertiser could hire a professional band and provide them a platform to dance in front of the train commuters. But instead he chose to involve ordinary individuals. This is the main reason – I think – why my friend wanted to share this. Because he imagined that he could also be among those train commuters and enjoy the atmosphere. He also sees that the dancers are not only the professional dancers who are performing for him, but also the ordinary people. This lets him feel involved in the ad and he thinks that others would have the same feeling. This show the importance of involvement character of the social media marketing. Involvement allows people to associate themselves with the situation and this creates a viral effect on media sharing.

tagged with: involevement, social media marketing, social media

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