Simon Salt's Blog, page 6

How Do Others See You?

How do others see you is a question that I was asked yesterday. It really made me think, I know how I want others to see me, but do I really know how they actually see me. No of course the "me" I'm talking about is the brand me not the person me. That can be a hard line to distinguish when you are talking about a person that has also worked to create a brand around themselves. Easier when you are talking about a company or an organizational brand.

How Do Others See You – What Image Are You Portraying?

Knowing how others, whether those "others" are customers, clients, readers etc see you can be a great aid in closing gaps in your brand image. During the conversation that sparked this post I discovered that the person I was talking with saw my brand in a very different way than I see it. This was actually a very positive thing for me, as they saw me much further developed than I saw myself. Nonetheless having that conversation made me realize that so often we plough ahead with our own perception and forget to actually check-in with the constituents that really matter – our audience.

I intend to check in with my audience on at least an annual basis and find out how they perceive my brand. What qualities do they associate with it, what attributes come to mind when they think of the name and also what do they not think of when they think of my brand.

How Do Others See You – How To Ask

How do you find out how others see  you? Especially in perhaps a more structured way than just a casual conversation. Big brands can afford to have market research conducted to obtain this type of feedback. How does a smaller organization or even a solo entrepreneur get the same feedback?

This is where relationships come in. Building a network of customers, clients and trusted voices that you can reach out to for answers to these questions is the easiest way to get that feedback. Of course it takes time and if you haven't already started then you have a long path ahead of you. But building it has so much value that it simply can't be expressed in revenue terms. Customers and clients have so much more to offer your business than just money. They have the perspective that, as business owners, brand managers and marketers we so often lack.

So as my group of readers – how do you see my brand? What attributes do you associate with it?

How will you ask your audience how they see you?

Image used under CC license by Tambako


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Focusing on Strengths

There are approximately six weeks until the New Year, I find that this is a good point in the year to spend some time focusing on strengths and decide what next year is going to look like. What are you going to do differently next year? Defining next year is not just about writing a wish list of things you hope will happen. Nor is it just a matter of creating a plan that you can execute. An element of reflection is a strong component of moving forward.

Focusing on Strengths – Gaining Perspective

In determining what I want next year to look like I spent sometime reflecting on the past year – what did I change, what worked, what didn't, what did I not try? These seem perfectly good points to reflect on, but I also spent some time taking an honest inventory of my strengths and of course in doing so, highlighted my weaknesses. Focusing on strengths gave me a sense of what I enjoy most about the work I do and how I might spend more time doing those things and, being honest, increase the amount of income those activities generate.

There are things I should be better at but am not. Some of those things will remain no matter what I decide to make 2012 look like, they are core activities necessary for any business. There are however things that are not only not core activities they are neither strengths nor things I enjoy – so why am I still doing them? In part I would imagine because I wanted to ensure that I at least tried them – which is a good reason to do something but not a good enough reason to sustain an activity.

Focusing on Strengths

Auditing yourself and your year is an interesting experience. A lot can change in a year – for example today is the one year anniversary of my move to Dallas from Austin – that was a significant change, and one I wouldn't have predicted at the beginning of 2010. In performing the audit on my own activities I highlighted three areas that I feel have both become strengths and are things from which I derive great enjoyment:

Speaking
Writing
Creating

I have spoken in public for many many years and to be honest, as anyone who really knows me well will tell you, I am happy in front of an audience of a couple of hundred than I am sitting at a table with a couple of people. This past year has given me the opportunity to travel extensively speaking in various settings and to a wide range of audiences – all of which I have thoroughly enjoyed. The fact that this is also becoming an increasingly significant contributor to my income is a distinct bonus.

Writing is something of a passion and a torture for me, as I know it is for a lot of writers. I never really imagined I would be able to earn a living writing, but surprising things happen. Not only did I manage to get a book written and published but I'm currently working on a second book for publication and a third for digital distribution, along with contributing as an author to various other outlets. It really does give me a lot of pleasure to write and so why would I not include that in my activities.

Creating is a vague term at best. For me it can best be described as working with ideas. Some people would call it Strategy, some people Ideation, some day dreaming. Of all the elements that I perform for companies, the big picture thinking, the wild ideas, the "what if" scenarios are what I enjoy most, so that definitely stays.

Focusing on Strengths – losing the weaknesses

In deciding to build a year based on what I feel are my strengths it also implies that I am not going to focus on the weaknesses. That is mostly true, I am acknowledging them and where possibly cutting them out of the processes and activities that I engage in. By focusing on strengths I am hoping that I build a stronger year in 2012, it's a gamble because, while I might see something as a strength that might not be a shared view and perhaps some of those activities that I consider weaknesses just might have made a difference if they were included in the mix.

What are you focusing on for 2012?

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The Myth of the Savvy Consumer

If you attend any conference that has any kind of social media component you will no doubt hear reference made to the savvy consumer. You will hear how they are demanding transparency and engagement and want to be included in the conversation. Most importantly you will hear that they don't believe the lies of advertising anymore and that social is the way forward.

The Savvy Consumer – Mythical Being

The Savvy Consumer is not a new being. Contrary to what social media "guru's" might tell you. Consumers have been savvy for decades. They have been discerning, they know a real deal when they see one and they know when they are being ripped off. The rise of social technologies like Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus didn't give rise to the Savvy Consumer. Consumers have been having the conversations over the garden fence, around the water cooler, on the phone and in the stores where they shop for as long as shops have existed.

The demand for transparency pre-dates social technologies by several decades – I don't remember reading about Erin Brockovich using Twitter to demand transparency from Pacific Gas & Electric Company – though I have no doubt she would do so today. Consumers have always wanted to have transparency in their relationship with brands. So where does this idea of the sudden appearance of the Savvy Consumer come from?

The Savvy Consumer & Social Technologies

It is far more likely that social technologies like Facebook, Twitter, Google + and blogs have woken marketers to the depth of understanding that consumers have of their methods rather than those technologies giving rise to the Savvy Consumer. Marketers are being shown that Social Media allows them to follow and even join in conversations, as though these conversations were new. They are being sold on the idea that if they adopt these technologies that they might stand a chance of catching up and perhaps regaining the upper hand with the Savvy Consumer.

The Savvy Consumer has decades on the newly sophisticated marketer. Social technologies will not make up for that gap. Social technologies are revealing the extent of the gap between marketers and the Savvy Consumer. Social technologies are providing the opportunity for the Savvy Consumer to organize around issues that matter to them faster and in a much more cohesive manner than ever before. The biggest revelation that social technologies has brought is not the existence of the Savvy Consumer but the existence of the unsophisticated marketer.

The Savvy Consumer and the Savvy Marketer

The Savvy Marketer is learning from the Savvy Consumers behavior. Learning to use the social technologies in the same way. Social technologies have brought back the need for artistry to marketing. Finesse rather than brute force in messaging has always been the core of great marketing. Perhaps this is the most important lesson marketers can learn from the Savvy Consumer, not that they don't want marketing, not that they don't want to be sold to, but rather that they want it to be done with style and grace.

I tell audiences, clients and anyone else who will listen that there are three main components to any successful marketing campaign that involves social technology. Fun, Repeatable and Shareable. To combine these three in one campaign is a difficult act and one that actually requires a lot more thought than many marketers are willing to give to their campaigns. The Savvy Consumer knows when they are being played, they also know when it serves their purposes to join in.

What are you learning from the Savvy Consumer?

Image used under CC license by Elsie


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Google + Brand pages Launch to mixed reception

After three months of waiting Google + Brand pages have launched. Businesses were told that the wait was necessary as Google wanted to get the brand pages right, so that there would be a great user experience for both the brands and the regular users.

Google + Brand Pages: Not Worth The Wait

After all the waiting, what did Google actually deliver? They delivered exactly the same page that regular users have been using for the past three months. The only slight variance is that the default circles are named differently. Did the Google + team hand this project over to a bunch of interns? There is no imagination in these pages, it's less usable than Facebook business pages. For example the pages can only have one administrator. When you use the Google + business page it signs you out of your personal account, meaning that any action you then take on Google + is as the brand page – a PR nightmare waiting to happen. It also requires you to sign back in to access your personal account – this is cludgy and poorly thought through.

You know you have screwed things up when one of your most vociferous advocates – in this case Robert Scoble – states on his blog:

Anyway, this is just a way for me to tell anyone thinking of signing up their company for a Google+ brand account to think twice.

That's a pretty damning statement for the platform, which undeniably a lot of people want to see succeed. Perhaps Mark Zuckerberg's assessment of Google + as being Google's "own little version of Facebook" wasn't far off the mark.

Google + Lacks Imagination

Google is a complex beast of a company, with most staffers having very little insight into the bigger picture of the organization. This hasn't stopped it from producing some incredibly innovative products, from the Android Operating System to self-driving cars. The one area that Google has consistently missed the mark is social. Google + is the best attempt by the company so far, after the messes that were Wave and Buzz. However, the sheer and obvious lack of thought that has gone into Google + business pages is bewildering. They had the chance to change the game and bring something to both businesses and users that would have sealed the deal and had mass migration from Facebook at least for businesses.

Instead what we have is just another place for brands to post their press releases, product announcements, blog posts and generally annoy the rest of the ecosystem. Google has missed the opportunity to redefine how brands act on Social platforms. They could have made Facebook look very 20th century and laid the ground rules for the 21st century. What went wrong?

Google + Business Pages – What Went Wrong?

Firstly, Facebook, like it or hate it, is a tough act to follow. Google has its work cut out for it trying to persuade anyone from the mainstream to move over. Of course the rush of social marketers, tech geeks and brand managers was great at first and the platform has certainly carved out a niche in the hearts and minds of those people, it still isn't offering anything radically new. Yes there are differences between it and Facebook – Hangouts are cool but so what? One cool feature doesn't a successful platform make. MySpace was "cool" for years before Facebook.

Secondly, the lack of apparent thought that has gone into some of the features makes me wonder who exactly is designing this product, it certainly isn't the same talent behind things like the Android OS. Perhaps the problem is that Google is primarily a geeks club. They produce some awesomely geeky tools. Android OS is much more favored by the geeks than iOS for a good reason. With Google + its like the matheletes have been placed in charge of organizing the prom – they know what their fellow math club members want but have no idea how to appeal to the jocks, debutantes, or any of the other students.

I'm with Robert Scoble on this one. If you run a business think long and hard before setting up a Google + business page, because ultimately you are going to be struggling to produce additional content for it.

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Chime.In – A Path Through The Noise

I recently signed up for another social network, as though I don't already have enough to manage. Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, LinkedIn, Untappd, Foursquare etc. etc. etc. So why would I sign up for yet another platform? Well firstly of course I sign up for platforms to review them, see if they have anything to offer and see if there is a reason for either myself or a client to use it. The reason I signed up for Chime.In was that it supposedly handled the noise pollution problem differently.

Chime.In : Less Noise More Quality

Chime.In follows the same layout as Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus. A main stream which contains all the posts from the people you are following. As with those other platforms, recommendations for people for you to follow are in the right hand margin and methods of filtering are on the left. This is not a bad thing, it makes getting around the site fairly intuitive, you see things where you expect to see them. You have a profile page to edit which contains the usual information – name, location, short bio, link to your website etc.

Nothing new or dramatically game changing here so far. Why would someone think they could beat Google or Facebook at their own game? This is where Chime.In differs. When you follow a person on Chime.In you get a choice, you can follow all their posts or you can choose to only follow the particular interests that you have in common.

Chime.In: Combating Noise

This is how Chime.In combats the noise. For example I have the following interests listed:

Photography
HDR
Street Photography
Social Marketing

So if you wanted to follow me, but really didn't care about my thoughts on Social Marketing but were interested in my thoughts on Street Photography and HDR you could just follow me and see when I post about those topics. This maybe the first platform where it's safe to follow Chris Pirillo and Robert Scoble and not be flooded with posts. For example I like Chris' reviews of tech, I like his pictures and videos of Lego, could definitely live without the Cat gifs. If he set his profile up with interests like:

Tech reviews
Lego
Cat gifs

I could choose which topics to follow him by and only see those posts. That gives me a much better level of control. After all that is how we segment people in real life.

Chime.In: Reflecting Real Life

The intersection of You and Me is Us. In any relationship there are overlaps in interests, the greater the number of overlaps the closer the relationship. For example my girlfriend and I both share interests in Sci-fi, tech, cats, books and travel. However, she likes Sushi and I do not, I like Muscle cars and she isn't really interested. So we have common interests and we have our own interests. This is true online as well. I want to see Robert Scoble's interviews with startups, I'm really not interested in his political views.

Could you do with less noise in Social Media?

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How To Lose Fans & Annoy Advocates: The Moleskine Story

Over the past week a study in how to lose the respect of your advocate base has slowly revealed itself in the form of a design competition being run by Moleskine, the notebook company. In the world of the Social Consumer in which we now all operate, advocates are far more powerful than Influencers. Influencers, are for the most part, incentivized to talk about a brand, product or service. Advocates on the other hand are so loyal to the brand, product or service that they will happily promote it for no reward other than seeing the success of their beloved brand.

Moleskine: Not Asking The Right Questions

What happened in this particular case? Moleskine decided to follow other brands and to hold a "social competition". They partnered with DesignBoom who have held these competitions for other brands in the past. DesignBoom has worked with car brands like Infinity, Renault and electronics brands like Fujitsu among others. So Moleskine obviously felt that they were in good hands having DesignBloom run a design based competition for a logo for their blog.

The biggest difference between Moleskine and the other brands that DesignBloom has worked with is the competition entrants. For Renault or Infinity the designs were not being submitted by drivers, they were being submitted by designers, which is also true for Moleskine and that is the issue. The intended competition entrants for the Moleskine competition are designers, which makes them Moleskines customers, potential customers and advocates. The question Moleskine forgot to ask is what do our customers do with our product? You would think they would know as the site for which they were seeking a new logo is a place for users of their products to showcase their work. Moleskine's product is central to their customers business, it is an essential tool that helps their customers generate revenue.

Moleskine: Asking For Free

The competition has caused an uproar in the design community because it is seen as an on-spec submission request – a request in fact for up to 3500 designers to submit their work for review and for one of them to be chosen as "the winner". Many freelancers, when they are first starting out have to do work on-spec to capture their first client. However, those are usually small clients and are used to add to a growing portfolio. That a company the size of Moleskine would expect designers to submit work for free in the hopes of "winning" the competition is a remarkable misunderstanding of who their customers are.

All of this might have been rescued were it not for the response to the criticism that Moleskine made on their Facebook page:

As far as the Moleskinerie logo contest is concerned, we would like to clarify that since the nature of Moleskinerie has always been participative, made up of passionate contributions and voluntary submissions, we decided to let the community participate again in creating the new logo of the blog.

We decided to collaborate with Designboom to do so, a leading online design magazine, which is well aware of how to run a contest of this kind.

If you had spent some time on the "Competitions" area of Designboom website, you certainly have seen that other Brands are running and previously decided to run similar contests, with the same regulation of our with great participation as well as amazing results.

That said, being a contest, there's a final price for the winner, but all the submissions are free, as well you are free not to taking part to it.

The tone, the arrogant and dismissive manner in which the criticism is addressed only added fuel to the fire. Designers, agencies and others are all leaving comments on the page stating that they will no longer be purchasing Moleskine products for their business – all of these comments are going unanswered.

Moleskine: Learn the Lesson

From the sidelines it is hard to see how Moleskine can recover from this particular PR nightmare. Their current tactic seems to be hide their head in the sand and hope it goes away. Asking their community to submit "free" work – which as any freelancer will tell you is the bane of their existence is such a monumental faux pas that it has revealed more about how little the company understands what happens to their product when it leaves them than I am sure they intended.

When you sell a business product it is incredibly important to understand how that product adds value to the end users business. Whether its a notebook or a computer, a piece of software or a vehicle. Knowing what your customer does with your product and how that action impacts their revenue gives you a much better insight into your customers needs and the ability to meet those needs.

Could Moleskine have achieved the same level of engagement without enraging their customer base? Yes, undoubtedly, most importantly they should have recognized the needs of their customers and folded those into the outreach that they were considering.

What advice would you give to Moleskine?

Thanks to anyone who has decided, and will decide to take part to it.


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When Your Favorite Service Closes

What happens on the internet stays on the internet – or so they say, how many times have you been warned that posting things on websites might come back to haunt you in years to come? Once again this week has disproved that to me. Two of the services that I have been using for more than 18 months have announced they are closing down this month.

The Internet: Temporary Happens

Earlier this year one of my favorite social location sharing apps was closed down. Whrrl which was created by Pelago and subsequently bought and shut down by Groupon – I wrote about my disappointment at the time – took with it a great community, of course I am still connected with some of those individuals on other platforms, but not in the same way.

This week Yap – a voicemail management app I have been using for quite sometime shut down. They sent out an email earlier in the month and within weeks had closed their doors. I will miss reading the sometimes hilarious transcripts of voicemails the service emailed me. Their premise was that they were more accurate than Google Voice in their transcripts – a claim which never really panned out – but nonetheless I really liked the service for its ease of use and the way it allowed for really deep personalization of what is, for the most part, an impersonal service – voicemail.

Also this week I discovered that Retaggr is closing up shop. Retaggr does what About.Me and other similar services do, except that they do it (or did it) in a more professional less 'me too" way and they were around earlier. The link on my Twitter profile has gone to my Retaggr page for a couple of years now and I met the team at SXSW a couple of years ago. Their announcement says that the principals have all moved on to other projects and that they just don't have the time to sustain the service anymore.

The Search For Alternatives

Of course when a service you have been using for sometime decides to close up shop you are left with the problem of finding an alternative. With web services that is becoming increasingly less difficult because good ideas are usually copied quite quickly. The problem is that finding an alternative that is more likely to last than the previous one you chose is not easy. As solid as they seem we, as users, have little insight into the dynamics inside a company and whether or not there is any sustainability.

Yap I have replaced with Google Voice. I am undecided about what to replace Retaggr with (suggestions welcome), I'm not wholly sold on the about.me model to be honest. Whrrl was irreplaceable and will forever be just a fond memory for me.

With Great Audiences Comes Great Responsibility

What the stories of Yap and Retaggr tell is that people with great ideas often can complete the early execution, but fail to realize that the sustaining their idea is hard work. It isn't glamorous, it can be, and for a lot of the time, is digging ditches. You have to not only love the idea but want to commit to it. It's the difference between dating and marriage. For what it is worth, I think the guys at Retaggr could have easily sold their site on Flippa and at least allowed the service another chance to continue.

But when you are done, you are done and you move on. Leaving behind the detritus of that period – the trouble is that the detritus often includes users with long memories. When the creators resurface with another new "service" they have lost trust from potential users who remember their last encounter. Why should they support your reincarnation? Its a lesson that many an entrepreneur would do well to learn early.

What are the services you can't do without?

image used under CC by Peter Kaminski


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If you enjoyed it I'm sure you'll enjoy my once a week newsletter - Did You See..? - I'll send you a few stories from around the web that cover Social, Digital and Mobile Marketing that I found useful. It's a quick but informative read

 

 

Will A Lack of Vision Sink Social in 2012?

There are only a few weeks left in 2011 the year that Social Media was supposed to become "normal" and yet as a recent report by Booz & Company/Buddy Media shows the majority of companies are fixated on Twitter and Facebook. That really isn't that surprising, especially when the C-Suite are so familiar with status updates that they believe that is all there is to Social Media.

What They See vs What They Want

This graphic describes the problem nicely. Executives and others looking to Social Media only see the tip of the iceberg. They see status updates, but what they really want lies much much deeper. Beyond the Social Marketing layer and into the depths where Digital Marketing lies. The problem is that they can't see the whole iceberg, only the tip. So when they start to talk about Social Media they think they understand what they mean but in reality are often convinced that the tip is all that is needed.

More than one captain has been caught out by not understanding the size of the iceberg he is encountering. As the Booz & Co/BuddyMedia report shows, 79% of respondents are pulling resources from Digital Marketing to pay for Social Media initiatives. This is a worrying trend. It is a strong indicator of the lack of understanding about where Social Marketing fits in the overall toolbox. The danger is that by visualizing Social Marketing as little more than another channel through which to push messages (96% of respondents see Social Marketing as an advertising and promotions channel) organizational leaders are going to run their Social ship aground.

Scratching The Surface

If, as some posit, Social Media/Marketing were the normal way we conduct business would we really still be reading reports like this? In all honesty most companies are still barely scratching the surface and most are still not even managing to do that. Some of the problem can be attributed to the perspective we have on the world as digital marketers – we love Social and Digital, so we believe everyone does and that most are using it. The truth is most are not. We are also guilty of perpetuating the myths that surround Social – it's cheap/free, it's easy, users are just waiting for brands to talk to them.

Will things change in 2012? There is one metric in the report that indicates perhaps things might change – 57% of respondents are planning on hiring headcount to manage Social Media within their organization. Hopefully having individuals or even a few of them in an organization that actually understand Social Marketing is more than just status updates will lead to an overall better understanding within organizations as a whole. I'm hopeful this will lead to change, but I'm also realistic that change, especially at the organizational level is hard and slow.

2012 – The Year of Social?

So will next year be the year Social becomes normal? As much as I want to say yes, I have to say no. I think we are at least 5 years away from seeing the term fall by the wayside in the same way as we rarely see the phrase e-commerce used these days. In the interim we should continue to point out that iceberg in the path of so many organizations who think they are navigating the waters of Social so well with their status updates while missing point.

What do you think, will the lack of vision sink Social in 2012?

 

I'm glad you took the time to read this post.


If you enjoyed it I'm sure you'll enjoy my once a week newsletter - Did You See..? - I'll send you a few stories from around the web that cover Social, Digital and Mobile Marketing that I found useful. It's a quick but informative read

 

 

Social Media Storytelling: Is Advertising better than Marketing?

Over the past five years or so I've seen lots of discussion about where Social Media should sit in an organization. Some will say it has to be in the Marketing department, others insist that it is a PR activity. What everyone agrees on is that the  Advertising department shouldn't be allowed anywhere near the Social Media toolbox.

Social Media Storytelling

Social Media is all about storytelling, or so the "guru's" will tell you. That's when they aren't telling you that it's all about relationships. Ok so I am supposed to tell stories to people so they will "like" me as a brand and that will create a relationship? Actually that is a pretty fair description of the way social media should work. It can't be about a relationship without there first being something to attract attention. Back in the day, as people are want to say around here (Texas), we used to practice a principle called AIDA - Awareness, Interest, Desire, Action. That has, for some people, fallen out of favor, but I have no idea why. It works, and it works at all levels of human interaction - which is afterall what Social Media is supposed to be about.

Think of dating. If you aren't aware of someone, then how will you take an interest in them? If you have no interest in them you are unlikely to find yourself desiring them, and if you have no desire you are unlikely to take any action - well any positive action. This holds true for every scenario that you can imagine for human interaction. Whether it is between two humans or a human and a brand. So first we need to create awareness and interest. Storytelling is definitely a great way to do that. Let's look at some examples:

Social Media Storytelling - Old Fashioned Advertising

Storytelling is being trotted out as the "key" to Social Media as though it were something new and wonderful, recently discovered by the social media "guru's". It isn't. Watch the video below:

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www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVGmdwHTP1I

That ad is from 1970 - the jingle went on to be covered by The Carpenters and became a hit on both the US and UK music charts (that's what they call viral these days). Notice that the name of the brand doesn't appear until the end. The focus is the young couple and their story. This is story telling, but it is also advertising. In 1970 the nearest thing to a mobile computing device was a pocket calculator which would have cost you approx $1800 in today's money. Social Media meant talking about last night's TV and yet here we were creating stories to bring a brand closer to its customers.

Take a look at this next video - it is fictional of course, but it mimics the thinking of the late 1960′s and the revolution that was advertising in the age of David Ogilvy. In Mad Men, the character of Don Draper isn't a Social Media guru - he is an ad man and he tells stories (and yes there is an ad before the clip).

www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2bLNkCqpuY

Social Media Storytelling - Advertising 2.0

So many of today's Social Media "specialists" have no grounding in marketing, PR or advertising. They have reinvented themselves a hundred times and this is just their latest persona. 3 years ago they were SEO experts, before that they were Website experts, who knows what they were before that. Don't get me wrong, I too have reinvented myself a hundred times (a long story for another time), but when you reinvent yourself it is incumbent upon you to know the history of the field that you are entering.

Social Media Storytelling isn't a new thing, it's just new to those who are new to the business of convincing people to buy things. Storytelling has always been the best way to sell things - to build an emotional attachment to a product, to set it apart from other products or services in the mind of the consumer. So when you are deciding how to shape your next Social Media campaign, take some time to talk to the advertising department. Ask them how they would tell your story, what emotional attachment they might bring to the fore and start from there.

How do you tell stories to customers?

image - simon salt ©2011 All Rights Reserved


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If you enjoyed it I'm sure you'll enjoy my once a week newsletter - Did You See..? - I'll send you a few stories from around the web that cover Social, Digital and Mobile Marketing that I found useful. It's a quick but informative read

 

 

Is Social Media Broken?

Can Social Media really be called Social any longer, is Social Media broken beyond all repair? Almost since its launch, people have been observing the "Echo Chamber" effect of Twitter. There have been studies that only 20% of the users are actually producing original content, the other 80% are simply reposting that content. Some have even gone so far as to claim that this "reposting" is in fact Content Curation. I think this is a very loose interpretation of any definition of content curation – if indeed such an activity really exists. What most people seem to refer to as content curation is in fact content aggregation. Content aggregation is the process of finding, culling and republishing other people's work to make your content seem interesting.

Why Social Media is Broken

Don't get me wrong I use content aggregation as a strategy in marketing communications – I don't consider it curation though. I use services like Paper.li to produce aggregated content that is then republished. I also aggregate content for my weekly newsletter "Did You See..?" (feel free to sign up). Some people would call this curation because I collect specific content – Digital, Mobile and Social Media marketing news, and then republish that. I disagree with it being called curation, because it misses one important factor – cataloging. Curation has to have a sorting/searching function for it to be curation. Can you imagine a Library that simply housed books with no way to find them, you just had to walk around until you found something interesting?

So back to why Social Media is broken. Its broken because it is no longer truly social. It is competitive and at times almost combative in nature, its all about being heard above the general clamor for attention. Evidence of this is in any one of the expert posts on how to get "retweeted", "reshared", or increase your "whatever" score, they will all tell you the same thing – share good content. They have strategies on where to find this good content – Alltop, Pulse, Taptu or any of the other feed based sites will make you popular.  How many of us complain about seeing the same posts over and over again when something becomes popular? But how many of us also share the same things that we have already seen? We know that the people we are sharing with, for the most part, are reading the same sources as us, but we share nonetheless. Occasionally, and increasingly rarely, do I see original comments posted with these shares. And that is where social is broken.

Lack of Thought Broke Social Media

The technology we use has made it too easy to share things. No longer do you have to use services like Evernote to "bookmark" a webpage and then remember to share it. Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus and every other social network has a widget for that. Want to share a funny cat picture no problem, want to share an article about the Wall Street Occupation, one click and done. The problem with that approach is that there is nothing of you in the share. There is nothing personal and therefore nothing social. I have no problem seeing the same content repeated but without the context of why you are sharing it becomes noise.

In the next few months Google Plus will open it's doors publicly to businesses. This could quite possibly be the worst thing to happen to the platform in its short life. Google has been running a beta with select businesses to work out how the Google Plus business pages should work – there are two distinct problems with this approach. Firstly, the businesses they selected to work with have social media departments run by early adopters – obviously or they wouldn't even know about Google Plus, secondly the noise that these pages will introduce won't come from the businesses, it will come from the wannabe influencers who feel that by repeating posts from their "favorite" brand they will get "noticed".

If Social Is Broken How Do We Fix It?

This is a huge question and I quite obviously don't have the definitive answer, I do however have a few opinions for what they are worth. Firstly, think of sharing content like sending an email. When you click send most email software warns you if there is nothing in the body of the email – something along the lines of "The body of this email is empty. Do you really want to send?" Imagine if we could have a share function that did that – "this content has been shared xxx,xxxx,xxx times in the past 24 hours, the comment field is empty are you sure you want to share it?" Or perhaps a filtering system that only shows you new posts on Facebook, G+ etc if there is a new comment attached by the person sharing.

As it stands, there is very little about Social Media that is truly Social. It is a collection of Media and broadcast media at that. In the general rush to be noticed we are all guilty of compounding the problem. In fear of being ignored, forgotten or left behind we pump out content – other peoples content, through our social channels in an attempt to be relevant and meaningful. Social Media is supposedly bringing the death of journalism, but if that is the case why is so much of what is shared on social sites culled from news, magazine and journal websites? Not only culled but shared without comment?

Perhaps the new mantra of the social web should be "Think before you Share".

If Social Media is Broken how would you fix it?

 

image used under cc license from oddharmonic


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