I’ve noticed a few social media campaigns recently (one involving a Pizza party and an X Factor non-winner, the other a package of chips, a pop superstar and some funky augmented reality) that have left me a little perplexed, mainly because of the complexity of what they were expecting their users to do – uploading photos, creating films, throwing parities, playing fancy dress…the list is endless . Maybe I should be taking more time to appreciate some of these strategies but I have limited time, just like the next person, and so if I’m going to participate in anything – be it a Facebook app, online game or ‘hashtagged’ Twitter conversation, the messaging has to be clear and the whole premise of the activity has to be simple to use.

Now this is obvious stuff but I’m amazed at how many brands are adopting online engagement tactics which insist on their users generating content or actually doing something outside their daily routine. Of course this is what we all strive for – UGC, an indication of true brand advocacy – but the reality is that only a small proportion of us are actually doing this. In fact, the percentage of content ‘creators’ and ‘critics’ has actually fallen (according to Forrester – A Global Update of Social Technologies Sep 2010) meaning that said behaviours do not naturally correlate with the increase on social media usage. Is asking so much involvement from your online supporters a sure fire way to foster advocacy or could it actually end up being detrimental?

This all goes back to the planning stage and really understanding who the target audience is online – insights that have to move past simply demographics. For credible results it has to be about tapping into online behaviours that the target audience is demonstrating or at least has a propensity to ‘want’ to get involved with.

There is of course nothing wrong in pushing boundaries and experimenting with new tactics online- this is what we would all like to do- but in many cases, are not some of these campaigns simply ‘overworked’ (and overworked in such a way that it leads to a bad user experience)? Users will engage, and interact with others when they don’t feel they are being coaxed into a behaviour that they wouldn’t usually adopt – it has to be a normal extension to ‘being social’ in everyday life.

The campaigns of this ilk are definitely trying something different and in many cases this is often compelling, but you have to wonder how much this has been based on the technology and not the consumer. It’s this that then has implications for the bottom line and how effective activity actually is.