KUDOS: Road testing a social media acronym
By Leo Ryan February 19th, 2008
In Blogging · Buzz/sentiment analysis · Commenting · Social media · Tool development · Word-of-mouth marketing
At last night’s chinwag I road tested a bit of thinking we’ve been doing in the form of a snappy acronym; KUDOS.
Essentially it’s a framework that we’ve been using to understand how social media activities work, don’t work and should work. Quite simply it is a set of qualities that we look for in a piece of social media activity. To work for both the brand and the audience these activities should be K_nowledgable, U_seful, D_esirable, O_pen and S_harable.
We use this to frame our planning and to focus the measurement of the resulting social media activity.
And let’s be clear here - we’re talking about social media and not the rather unhelpfully named social networking sites within which a social network might operate and wherein social media activity might very easily occur.
I’m busily tidying this up for release later this week - I was a little rash with my proclamation that I’d blog it today. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.
However - as I am pottering around the flat with the idea I’d be interested in any thoughts on the actual choice of the 5 qualities that we believe are likely to make for successful social media activity - successful for both the originating brand and the participating audience.
Thoughts on a postcard to the usual address.
Tags: chinwag, KUDOS, Social media
1 Mat Morrison // Feb 19, 2008 at 11:12 pm
Wow. Someone actually tweeted this before *you* did (@swhitley.)
Love what you’ve done. Hope it catches on (although I suspect that the “and” should read “or”)
Despite all the evidence I have in front of me, I still don’t *really* know what social media is. And because I don’t know that, I really don’t know anything.
2 Mat Morrison // Feb 19, 2008 at 11:14 pm
Incidentally — this isn’t helping
3 Dan O'Connor // Feb 20, 2008 at 12:59 am
>>>follows Mat’s link<<<<
NOOOOOOO! Social Media 2.0? Sweet Baby Jeebus, no!
There was a round in this week’s Just a Minute where they had to talk about ‘tautology’ and I’m fairly sure a rundown of that website would have done it.
—-
What I like most about KUDOS is the reciprocality of it, how it must apply to both brand and audience, and how that reciprocality seems to hinge around the ’s’ of sharing - pushing the activity around as many social networks as possible.
I forget though, Leo, where’d we come up with it, again?
4 Dan O'Connor // Feb 20, 2008 at 1:03 am
Plus also, can we do it as a song, a la ‘A - you’re adorable…’ ? ‘K - you’re knowledge… U - you’re useful’? no? no?
5 Leo Ryan // Feb 20, 2008 at 8:31 am
Dan, you know full well it was the result of years of monastic and scholarly contemplation. You don’t just ‘come up with’ acronyms like that over lunch at Canteen.
6 Wendy McAuliffe // Feb 20, 2008 at 4:45 pm
Hey Leo. What I like about this concept is that it has a practical application and gives tangibility to the intangible! I also largely agree with your selection of criteria, which cunningly spells a good word too! I personally might throw an ‘E’ in there for E-ngaging, which I believe should be at the heart of all social media work.
7 Bobby Hewitt // Mar 16, 2008 at 6:37 pm
Viewed from Ryan’s point of view, social media has a much broader definition that really goes back to real world networking and friendship where the value of the relationship is built on mutual benefits.
8 Social media and the political process // Apr 4, 2008 at 3:44 pm
[...] brains trust here at RMM is exploring the applicability of the now-famous KUDOS approach (have you been paying attention there at the back?) to the world of politics, and with [...]
9 Future trends for social media // Apr 22, 2008 at 6:29 pm
[...] this is going to be very frustrating as it requires a new way of approaching communications; KUDOS might well give them a good steer as to where to [...]
10 The Endless Battle Between Closed and Open Systems // May 1, 2008 at 1:17 pm
[...] media activities too. We are great advocates of openness here, in fact it’s the “O” in our KUDOS acronym. On the other hand, there’s a lot to be said for slick, accessible tools, if they provide the [...]
11 Has the Social Media Release Killed the Press Release? // May 12, 2008 at 4:04 pm
[...] release should meet the same criteria as any piece of social media content: i.e., it should have KUDOS. The K, U and D are nothing new to PR writing pros: tell your audience something interesting and [...]
12 The Associated Press and Bloggers: A DUK-and-Cover Strategy? // Jun 18, 2008 at 12:06 am
[...] news service whose daily story output could represent the very embodiment of KUDOS would like all of you bloggers out there to, well, to back off. Which I guess, if they succeed, [...]