Have you ever tried to convince someone who has never read a blog, who’s anti Facebook and hates the concept of Twitter that Social Media is one of the most valuable marketing initiatives they could ever engage in?
If you have I hope it went better for you than it did for me. In my experience trying to convince social media naysayers that they should get on the social media band wagon is largely a wasted exercise.
These people seem to able to block out the sound business rationale behind using social media. Common comments are…it’s a fad, it’s just like every new tool that comes along – it won’t change a thing in the long run, it’ll be here today and gone tomorrow…and no matter how much evidence you present these people with they still seem to think that social media lovers are a bunch of starry-eyed daydreamers who aren’t ‘Getting Things Done’.
Perhaps there is some merit to this argument but I feel it’s countered by loads of peeps who are are throwing down seven different kinds of smoke in the ‘real world’ and still pimping it in social media- yet the naysayers seem to be unwavering in their defiance of social media as a wicked tool for business.
Have you ever encountered this argument? If so how do you deal with it? Do uThink we should embrace the haters or ignore them completely?
This is a guest post that I wrote for iJump – check out there other posts for some great insight into social media.
In 2009 there’s no doubt that social media rocketed into the mainstream, but towards the end of 2009 there were various signals pointing to the fact that social media had now become a massive turn-off!
Around the same time last week Simon Young wrote a post called 7 Predictions for 2010. Prediction No.5 was…”Social media will stop being a newsworthy marketing ploy in its own right, as more businesses get on board and start connecting to their audiences. Businesses will need to find something intrinsically interesting about themselves, rather than just the fact that they’re on Twitter…”.
Then on new years eve Alex Williams from RWW wrote a post that somewhat encapsulated just how much of a turn off social media is becoming.
Almost as to signify the death of social media as a buzz-word his post titled Let’s Move Away From Social Media and Get Down to Business described how “social media” has become ripe pickings for satirical videos (like this one), and a more holistic approach is needed.
What’s causing social media’s loss of sex appeal?
Like many of those late night infomercials it was always too good to be true…”with only 20mins a day using our free tools you too will be able to call yourself a social media expert – and best of all… no accreditation necessary”.
It seems that for the moment, with no measure of credibility it’s very much a case of one bad apple makes the whole barrel go rotten. Unfortunately, with 15740 self proclaimed social media experts there’s bound to be more than one or two peddling social media snake oil.
Adding to this is also the fact the every Tom Dick and Harry has leaped head first into social media…nothing kills sex appeal like mainstream popularity.
While social media may have lost it’s sexy sheen and wow factor, I don’t believe that snake oil salesmen or mainstream popularity will ever truly kill off social media’s inner Fonzie, as there are enough great people doing some truly amazing things with social media to act as a counter balance.
No one wants to be a social-media loser
Losers get no action! Now that every man and his dog has a Twitter account and a Facebook page how is anyone going to get ahead using social media?
Well what made social media so darn interesting for businesses in the first place? Was it the cool funky social tools or was it the fact that some really switched on companies where breaking the mould and actually interacting with people in an engaging way? Me thinks the later.
So it is likely that it will be the same way people have always broken through the clutter, by being outstanding. By finding their own purple cow. For truly great businesses social media may have been a new opportunity but it wasn’t a revolution. The companies who grabbed our hearts and minds before social media came along are the same ones who are using social media to further their focus on customers and who continue to delight us with their innovations. – Just think about what Air NZ have done with the airpointsfairy.
It may be only a matter of time before it’s all just considered marketing again – and just as there always has been, there will be good, bad and downright ugly marketing.
Are you still turned on by social media?
Social media will stop being a newsworthy marketing ploy in its own right, as more businesses get on board and start connecting to their audiences. Businesses will need to find something intrinsically interesting about themselves, rather than just the fact that they’re on Twitter (and that their product is great, of course).
This is a guest post that I wrote for the PocketSmith blog. Pocketsmith is a personal finance and forecasting application that uses a freemium model – check them out.
When talking about free there’s clichés aplenty…“there’s no such thing as a free lunch”, “there’s free as in speech and there is free as in beer” etc. The funny thing about clichés is that there’s often a kernel of truth to them.
There’s No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.
You might be thinking…I’ve snuck into a couple of free lunches in my time and got away with it pretty much scot-free, are you sure there’s no such thing as a free lunch???
Who pays when its “Free Forever”…free forever could be more appropriately re-labelled as “subsidized”. With zero cost to the consumer, the cost is usually passed onto an advertiser or future acquirer. In some cases this can create a conflict of interest and almost always results in an indirect cost to the consumer.
Who pays under a “Freemium Model”…“Freemium” basically describes giving away a free version of a product with the hopes that a number of free users will love it enough to upgrade to the “premium” version. Simply put, the minority who love/need the service enough to upgrade to the premium version pay for the free users. Countless online businesses use this model simply because the marginal cost for hosting each free users is almost $0.00 – long live the longtail.
Who pays when there is absolute “Freedom To Pay”….also known as the donation model. This is where the generous consumers who actually uses the donate button funds the service for the huge majority who take the free version and run. In the case of free wordpress plugins this model sometimes leads to underpaid developers, poor plugin maintenance which ultimately costs the blogger in both time and energy.
Who pays for “Open Source”…loads of different people, in the case of the Mozilla Foundation, Google forks out for over 85% of their revenue. In the case of Linux there are a number of large organisations (e.g. IBM & Intel) that dedicate the time of their developers to making and submitting changes – don’t believe me then check this chart. Both Firefox and Linux also also sell T-shirts, mugs and other fan gear which gives the consumer the ability to (financially) support the cause. There is often also an additional cost to the consumer, this is the time cost associated with the additional hours dealing with bugs.
Um duh’…there are pros & cons for each form of free…when choosing between similar types of software each using a different free model you’re clearly making a trade off between the various pros and the sometimes not so obvious cons of each.
Free Beer vs Feer Speech
Free beer is supposedly the bait that is used to hook a consumer. Free speech is supposedly free with no strings attached. To some extent the same is true for the online world.
Free software is somewhat like free beer, as indicated above, someone is always paying. However, speech is now freer than ever. We can now publish what ever we want whenever we want. Your newly empowered consumer voice now gives you (along with everyone else) the ability to air your concerns, wants, needs, dreams and desires to the world.
Who Wins In The World of Free?
The real winner in the world of free is the uber-smart consumer who will take advantage of one or multiple forms of “free“. A truly savvy consumer will also maximise their bliss by using the web to supercharge their Free Speech and get more of what they want.
On the flip side of this it’s the companies who attempt some sort of free (as in $0.00) and are open, responsive and even encourage the free speech of thier consumers that will really excel in the world of free – Phil Osborne would call this Free/Style Business (video here).
When talking about the future of Wired, Chris Anderson said “We need to do something that doesn’t exist online, and do it in a superior way. Otherwise we should just do it online.” This might just be the superior way that they’ve been searching for…
Did you notice the sharing interface…pretty cool aye!
Now imagine how impressive the Mag+’s interface and social sharing system could be if coupled with augmented reality, so kinda turbo-charging what Esquire did with their Robert Downey Jr edition.
The problem with print is that once something has gone to the press its locked in forever – unable to be tweaked or reshaped. But for a long time the tactile and visual experience that was confined to the world of brochures, magazines and newspapers made it worthwhile.
Thnk about it…you’ve got a beautiful visual interface, an amazing tactile experience that has wicked social sharing and interactive features and ads that blur the boundary between the real and the digital worlds…why would you use anything else.
In the “real world” canvases take up physical space and therefore are usually confined to a single artist’s work. But the internet continues to teach us that in the world of pixels you can have limitless canvases and infinite artists. But most importantly, because neither digital canvases or artists are confined to “real world” collaboration and co-creation are made possible.
The vid below is by far the most inspiring project that I’ve come across to date. A mashup of social media, co-creation and micro-financing – it might just be the start of something beautiful.
Masterpiece 2.0
Masterpiece 2.0 is a self described “social media art project” by Baschz and Selfcontrolfreak. It’s the first ever canvas made with a Web 2.0 approach. The canvas interacted with its visitors who affected both the process and final outcome of this masterpiece.
For a small fee you were able to interact with the canvas, otherwise you were able to follow the artist’s tweets and view the whole project via a webcam.
As innovative and inspiring as this project was, could it have been even more social? How far can co-created art & social media go? Are there business implications? Perhaps this is the social solution for micro-financing artists.
There is quite a lot of chat going on about the amount of self-proclaimed Social Media experts popping up on Twitter right now. I wasn’t horribly surprised when I read that the number of (for the sake of this post I’m going to call them Social Media Pros or SMPS) had exploded from 4,487 to nearly 16,000 in just seven months – check out B.L. Ochman’s blog.
If you are a SMP (or if at least that is how you want to make a name for yourself), of course you will be doing it on Twitter. Go to a conference about the adverse affects of smoking and I’d expect you would find more than a few health professionals. From time to time I experience a sensation others tell me is known as “common sense”. Right now it’s telling me not all the SMPs on Twitter are actually legit; but it is fair to expect an over-representation on one of the most popular SM platforms.
The thing that really jumped out at me about the new spate of SMPs was the names that some of these aficionados give themselves…The first is the SM Guru. Fair to say the Gurus already get the flack they probably deserve online. Watch the video below to see what I’m talking about. (sorry about the language).
I do like the term “Social Media Ninja” though. If you are going to give yourself a ridiculous title you might as well make it hilarious. I feel as if not all 79 of these Ninjas are just having fun with it. I’d say some do actually think their social media savvy is Ninja-esque . The question is would you seriously employ someone that claimed to be a Ninja to work on you SM strategy? I wouldn’t.
On a more constructive note the stats did get me to thinking about what it means to be a social media expert, and what allows someone to call themselves that? Obviously having a formal qualification would be a start. Funnily enough a quick Google search told me Birmingham City University is now offering a masters course in the field. Master of social media, is that cooler than being a Ninja? Na. I do enjoy the Q and A section of the Birmingham site: “Become a social media consultant (and understand what that means)”. If you can’t work that one out perhaps you should rethink enrolment in a post-graduate program?
So in the future there WILL be qualified social media “experts”. But how do the current mix earn their stripes? Experience? Trial and error? Who knows really. I’m betting the majority are far less proficient than they claim to be. As I’ve mentioned in other posts I believe SM is just one element of the marketing mix. Just as there has been advertising experts in marketing for decades, now you get SM experts too. Over time the actual “gurus” will emerge and the pretenders will hopefully find some other fad bandwagon to jump on, or off.
marketing initiatives they could ever engage in?
Loading ...