Posts

The network of you

You are media.

Everyone is media, because everyone is a storyteller.

The photo you shared, the joke you told, the meme you sent on its merry way – all stories from the network of you.

 

We are all telling stories, every day, and if you come at your brand understanding that, it can help you tell its story.

The longer stick: social media marketing isn’t digital marketing

A third piece of this thought process here:

The same people who come to me asking about “digital marketing” without exception lump social media in there. In fact, many seem to think that social media is the sum total of digital marketing, or at least the most important part.

NO. No. No. Social isn’t digital at all. Social media is just technology enabling things people already like to do.

For a business or a brand, social media amplifies all the things you are already trying to get your customers to do: talk about you; solve any problems they may have with you; stay in interaction with your brand; share your offers, promotions, and content with others; remain loyal; recruit new customers.

If you can see social of all kinds as part of a natural continuum of the efforts you’re already making – if you can visualize using it the same way you’d use a longer broom to reach a far-away cobweb, or use a longer stick to fish something out of a puddle – you’ll find social media strategy and tactics much, much easier to implement.

Audience?

Remember “the audience is listening”? No longer applicable.

If you define an audience as a group of people who are only, or even primarily, watching and/or listening, then there’s no such thing as an audience anymore.

Photo by Pieter Musterd. Creative Commons.

How to understand social

There is a perception that social media is an extension of digital marketing, and this makes it frightening new territory for people who don’t see themselves as digital.

But it’s not the same as learning code or even learning to troubleshoot your laptop or hook up a home system. There’s a reason it’s called social. It’s not digital.

Relax.

It’s technology catching up to human nature.

If you can be social, you can handle social media. Just do what comes naturally (really!). Don’t sell, just like you wouldn’t sell to friends.

Photo by Suzanne. Creative Commons.

Conversation

Conversation around brands isn’t any different than conversation at a cocktail party. The most interesting one will have the most conversation and leave the greatest impression. (The trainwreck will leave an impression, too, but it’s not the one you’re looking for.) Would you talk to your mom with that mouth?

Photo by Mo Riza. Creative Commons.

Marketers are Bad, Bad People (loooong post)

From Paul Carr’s TechCrunch piece on integrated advertising, especially on Twitter (the piece is wonderfully entitled NSFW: Give Me Ad-Free Conversation or Give Me Death (Please RT):

A tweet isn’t a “piece of content”. It isn’t editorial. No matter whether we’re talking about what we’re having for lunch or suggesting a new movie or sharing a piece of news, what we’re really doing is having a good old-fashioned conversation. Following people on Twitter is like organising the world’s largest cocktail party – we’ve decided who’s opinions we trust, and we’ve invited them to come into our homes and talk to us about things they are genuinely interested in. The moment people start screwing around with that principle, the whole system collapses.

Couldn’t define the current and/or idealized nature of Twitter any better. As marketers (Carr: “What I do is Good and Pure; what they do is Bad and Dirty.” So true) we are faced with a world where any traditional notion of advertising is easily avoided by all smart people and most not-so-smart. So we leverage ourselves into content and “conversations” because people like those. At which point, like an airborne contaminant, we risk ruining that content/conversation experience by rendering it no longer genuine (the word “authentic” is currently in my “social media cuss jar” via which folks in our meetings are fined for egregious buzzword use*).

One answer to this is to leave the conversations alone in order to maintain their authentic real and genuine nature, thus retaining what is currently a quite effective marketing tool.

Over/under on that happening? Thought so.

* Social media cuss jar is combined with Internet jargon cuss jar and includes such words and phrases as “100,000 foot level”, “drill down”, and the execrable “best practices”. You get the picture.

art by Myaku-nya