Friday 6 January 2012

2012 - The Year That Social Media Became Exhausted


 
Nick Tadd says 
"About bl**dy time too. According to Mashable 2012 is the year we exhaust social media."

I couldn't agree more. I don't think that it is dead ("deceased, no more" as in Monty Python) but as mashable say, we are exhausted. Social/digital Exhaustion will become the catch phrase.


People finally realise that connecting or following or being followed (as a numbers game) is meaningless unless there some purpose and some result. (See Twitter is For Losers)

I think the light bulb moment is when you employ people and they appear to be playing on social media (while you are paying them to do so).


Now I don't deny the benefits of being open, pursuing random connections and so on. I love it. BUT we must not confuse activity (=wheel spin?) with business.


I am not the social media guru but we have noticed that many of our clients have become fixated with activity and almost irrelevant metrics when they need to get back to basics... 


So reflecting about the state of play... On the one hand, we have the social media zealots grabbing at the next new best thing universal antidote (and yes I do feel myself falling for Google Plus!!!). On the other hand, we have the incredibly lazy marketing habits of the old school agencies (see Why Marketing is a load of B******s!) simply spending more in a naive attempt to interrupt and buy people's attention. 


What I do know is that there is:
  1. just too much noise and it is turning off a lot of people
  2. just too much "me-too" follower behaviour (buyers and sellers)
  3. not enough common sense engagement and connection
  4. a brilliant system (fast, quick, vast, cheap) to reach out and find and explore and share with others.
  5. tons of opportunity if you can just navigate your way through it all
  6. not enough time to do it all so a need for clear guidelines, prioritisation and time management!!!
To be honest, I am starting to feel that the problem is actually about THE MESSAGE. Your message. (The channel may be a red herring.):

  • What exactly are you saying that is interesting? 
  • Is it compelling? 
  • Worthy of attention? 
  • Clear and helping other to understand what you do? 
  • And how can you help?
All the talk is about how you communicate and what works . (Maybe that's simpler than dealing with the basic "why should people bother to buy from you question!) 

But if the message is broken (and let's be honest, most are) then you are simply wasting your time.

4 comments:

James Potter said...

Hoorah yes, yes and yes. Way to many people do "stuff" on social media and think that the "stuff" is the right "stuff" as people follow, like, connect etcetera and then some whizzy ROI model makes them feel good about the fact they lost hours of work time but got "stuff" done. The "experts" talk generally about concepts, models and show bright white shiny teeth but little of real effects and ££££.

I speak on platforms with many other (real) experts who will strongly reject the "stuff" view as expressed in the article, do the right thing, do it well and get a real ROI, one that goes kerching at the bottom line is my personal measure of ROI.

There was also an interesting piece put out by Sandler recently that they think this year is when people make real sales on social media, bad news for them is that people that know what they need to do have been doing it for years. It is not rocket science, it is not even science, it is a platform.

LinkedIn is my world, I don't do "social media" I dont think you can (don't get me started on that soap box) and there are companies large and global through to one man and local getting double digit percentages of their income from it.

Great piece to share Robert,

Best wishes,

James

The Linked In Man

Robert Craven said...

Brilliant James.

Thanks so much for your contribution.

RC

James Rigby said...

Great image. very funny. Followed the debate on Ecademy which was more than there is here.

Jurge said...

This adds to the library that you write on this subject