Archive for the 'social media' Category

« Previous Entries
Next Entries »
01
Feb
11

Geeks and cliques

By Barry Dewar 3 Comments
Categories: social media

Occasionally I find myself questioning the value of the networks which I have become a part of in social media spaces, particularly Twitter.

It all feels very insular. Outside of these networks, does anyone know or care about all the little waves of interest that rise and fall in our dashboards on a daily basis.

There’s a lot of talking. A lot of discussion about what we find cool, what we’d like to do and how cool social media is. Take a step back though, and look again. You’ll see that not that much is actually happening.

The conversations are great and I’ve developed some new friendships. But why haven’t we changed the world yet? This is supposed to be the tool which brings us together, makes us stronger and allows us to forge a new tomorrow.

Blessed are the geeks.

And what of the businesses that we have tempted into our rockets? Where are the ones whose trajectory has been shifted noticeably upwards with the addition of a few tweets and a Facebook page?

So, is social media cliquey? Yes, it most certainly is. And by focussing inwards in these cliques, everything that we see is magnified disproportionately.

But is social media diminished by this?

No, I don’t think it is. Smart businesses are harnessing these cliques to bolster their brand.

It’s just business though. It’s not the paradigm shift it sometimes seems to those of us who have immersed ourselves in social media.

If we’re to use it successfully it needs to be approached as a business function. Not a magic bullet.

Put it in your business plan. Don’t make it your reason for being.

14
Dec
10

Mashable are doing it wrong

By Barry Dewar 1 Comment
Categories: facebook, marketing, musings, social media and twitter
Tags: , , , ,

When I started to take an interest in social media a couple of years ago, the concern most often voiced was that marketeers would get their grubby hands on it and spoil it for everyone else. I never really felt that would happen because of the permission based nature of the thing. You only see the updates of people or brands that you have chosen to follow. For me that was an important distinction between social media and all traditional media up until that point.

What I hadn’t banked on was the pervasive nature of underhand marketing tactics. There have been a few things recently which have annoyed me. I already ranted briefly about marketing types making recommendations based on nothing but loyalty to their own clients.  This time my hackles have been raised by The Mashable Awards. 

I have nothing against the awards in principle, or awards in general.

What gets my goat is the requirement that any vote in the awards is automatically retweeted or posted to your Facebook account. It can’t be turned off. So if you want to vote for a few things then you are actively spamming your own followers on behalf of Mashable.

It’s most annoying because Mashable are the ubiquitous social media follow. Everyone with any interest in the arena is reading what they say and this begins to look like an acceptable approach to viral marketing. 

It’s not. 

It’s insidious. Any vote I might make on the site is purely an endorsement for that brand, it is in no way an implicit endorsement of Mashable, yet if I vote I am promoting their content without consultation. The status updates that it generates are junk mail and should be treated as such.

It may not seem like a big deal. If we are all following Mashable anyway then we do kind of endorse them right? Maybe, but that’s not the problem.

Rather, if other hooked up organisations begin to adopt the same approach, our Facebook feeds or Twitter streams will quickly fill up with this crap.

Just as we do with spam we will learn to ignore it and software will be developed to automatically remove it from our lives. 

Our carefully selected, permission based social media networks will cease to be of value and we will move on to something else.

Marketeers who use social media. Don’t take a leaf out of Mashable’s book. If you truly value your customers and have respect for whatever they CHOOSE to say using social media channels, trust them to work out whether they want to tell the world that they have just clicked on your call to action.

08
Dec
10

Just splashing about

By Barry Dewar 1 Comment
Categories: social media
Tags: ,

My son (who’s 4) went along to his first swimming class yesterday.

He’s been to the swimming pool with my wife and I since he was a few weeks old and, as far as I knew, he couldn’t swim. He enjoyed being in the water, splashing and playing, but he couldn’t actually travel from A-B without assistance.

Then yesterday I come home to find him excitedly waving a badge at me. Turns out he’d swum a length! On his own!

See, I thought I had him pegged. But I didn’t. He was way better than I ever knew and all he needed was a bit of encouragement.

You’re way older than 4, are you just splashing about?

Image credit: Timothy Smith

02
Dec
10

Your job as a creator of content

By Barry Dewar Leave a Comment
Categories: social media
Tags: , , ,

People access the internet because they want information.

They use that information to help them make decisions. It might be small decision like “what should I watch on telly tonight?”, or it might be a big one like “should I move to Dunfermline?”*

It’s your job, as a creator of content, to make those decisions as easy as possible by providing all of the relevant information. It’s NOT your job to steer those people to make a decision that you may prefer by only providing some of the relevant information.

If your offering is good enough then you should have no worries. If it’s not, then you’re going to be found out sooner rather than later.

* for the record, the answers are “QI” and “No!”

25
Nov
10

Honest recommendations

By Barry Dewar 11 Comments
Categories: facebook, social media and twitter
Tags: , , , , , ,

One of the best uses of social media is for trusted reviews and recommendations. This works because, in theory, you build up a network of people who you know share your viewpoint. When they tell you that they have tried something and it was good, you listen and there’s a good chance you will try it too.

Marketeers are spoiling this.

More and more now I am seeing people making recommendations and bigging things up simply because someone has a vested interest in it. Maybe they are a client, maybe a friend. Maybe they are offering you some other incentive to post about them. There are 101 reasons.

This is all too prevalent in other places. It’s the reason why Googling product or service reviews is no longer of any use. It’s been the nature of the world offline for as long as any of us can remember.

Try and make the social media world a better place, think twice before you come out of a client meeting and shoehorn their product into your next tweet.

« Previous Entries
Next Entries »
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.