Social currency is the influence you hold within various online and offline social networks, and the degree to which your brand is promoted or discussed by these social network communities. Social currency is spent a brand or individual shares content, sharing irrelevant or monotonous content could result in losing status amongst followers and social communities.
So, how do we build our social currency?
There are six social behaviours that drive social currency and those are:
Utility - Value that is derived from engaging with brand and individuals. Utility creates value for consumers, while facilitating social relevance.
Information - This is value consumers derive from gaining access to high-quality, valuable, and sharable information. This information can be original or shared from an original source.
Conversation - This is the way consumers derive value from when a brand engages with the conversation surrounding a brand or product.
Advocacy - Value derived from the promotion or defence of a brand. Developing strong relationships where consumers will advocate and have vested interest brand to others.
Affiliation - Offering a sense of community amongst your customers. Value derived from connecting and becoming a member of a community linked to a brand or business.
Identity - Value derived from the expression of the individual consumer or the brand with others. Providing customers with their own identity within a group or group subset.
What are the benefits of social currency?
Insight - Positive social currency and capital deepens the relationship between a brand and the customers. These heighted relationships allow for brands to gain more information on their customers and how the products are being used.
Influence - When a brand’s social currency becomes large enough, they’ll be able to be recognised as an influencer within its respective industry. This in turn helps with consolidating its position and gaining leverage with new consumers and other influencers.
Organic growth - As your customers continue to advocate your brand and share your products or services means that their connections become knowledgeable of your brand, naturally increasing growth.
Impact - Social currency helps grow the market value of your brand, when consumers see others interacting with a brand in a positive way, the consumers trust of the brand deepens and the relationships becomes stronger as a result.
Premium pricing - Having an extremely positive social currency will allow brands to position themselves through the way consumers perceive the value of the product, this means that is a brand’s social currency is high they’ll be able to charge premium prices by adding auxiliary and peripheral products and services.
Word of mouth - Having social currency also allows brands to create advocates more easily, this in turn increases the conversations happening around a brand and allows advocates to support or defend the brand to other consumers.
So, in conclusion social currency is essentially brownie points you have with your consumers.