social media experts

Social media: Preposterous before…er…Posterous came along?

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, External Communications, Marketing, Public Relations, Social Media and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , .

Apparently sane person is asked what they consider to be the ‘next big thing’ in social media. (Actually, scratch that ‘apparently sane’ bit – anyone who’s in a position to be asked what they consider to be the blah blah blah is obviously several tweets short of the full nest.) And this person named three potentials – Foursquare, Brightkite and Posterous and another one the name of which I simply couldn’t be arsed to remember which wasn’t, after all, a ‘social medium’ in the true sense, more a CMS. Which, therefore, doesn’t really make it eligible to be the new Twitter. Even I know that.

Anyway, given that I’ve already had a look at Brightkite some time ago and felt that it really had very little to offer (well, it didn’t, go and look for yourself), I thus had two to choose from and I chose Posterous.

Now. If something had been touted to you as the next big thing in social media, you’d expect it to be a bit special, wouldn’t you? Wouldn’t you? Or is it just me? Yes, of course you would. Well, here it is:

http://posterous.com/

And no, don’t bother, because it isn’t.

Maybe it is me. Maybe I’m missing something. I read another post this morning about the wonderful world and uses of Twitter and how big companies like Dell and Pepsi and Coke…………………hold on a cotton-picking moment. Aren’t they the same three companies that are ALWAYS mentioned whenever someone wants to demonstrate how social media has been used to corporate advantage? Are there no other examples?

I can only draw one conclusion. And it’s the same one. Social media and social media marketing are another minor royal with no clothes on. Not even an Emperor, more a Duke of somewhere not-terribly-important. Posterous – and the acqusition of Friendfeed by Facebook are nothing more than the desperate attempts of those who are making a living from the chimaera to string that living out for a little longer.

Tell me I’m wrong.

Social Media – A Tweet in Time….er….

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, Crisis Management, External Communications, Marketing, Public Relations, Social Media and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , .

Some more happy horsedroppings, this time from that venerable organ, the WSJ. Read it here.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124925830240300343.html

On first glance this all seems fine – big names – Ford, Pepsi, Coke etc etc etc – all got a social media presence, all got social media teams, must be important.

Then delve down a bit.

So Ford found that people were complaining about the shutting down of a website. C’mon guys. So what. Is this actually going to affect sales of your cars (because that’s what, as an auto manufacturer, you’re all about and don’t you forget it). No, it’s not. Therefore, all the time that your people spent ‘rectifying the situation’ was, in fact, time wasted.

So Coke found that some guy with 10,000 followers was having difficulty reclaiming a promotion. They fixed it for him. He chaged his avatar to a picture of him with a bottle of Coke. Hot-diggety-dog-dump and a big fat whoop-de-do. Did it sell more Coke? Probably not. Did it impact on this guy’s 10,000 followers? Probably not. Why? because most of those followers don’t actually exist or, if they do, aren’t active. See the link below:

http://www.downloadsquad.com/2009/08/13/firm-reports-twitter-is-40-useless-babble-were-0-surprised?icid=sphere_wpcom_inline

So, Coke, all that time your people spent sorting it out? Wasted.  In fact, the WSJ article is just plain wrong, on many, many different levels. Not least of which is that it reveals that these companies have such desperate cases of Shiny Object Syndrome that they are lashing undoubtedly obscene amounts of money on the salaries and benefits packages of entire teams of ‘social media strategists’.

C’mon. Facebook and Twitter (there’s another thing wrong with this article – gives it the lie in fact – these are the only two social media mentioned) are passing fads. There’s no burgeoning new comms/marketing world being signalled by social media/online social networking. It’s a chimaera. It doesn’t exist – and neither, therefore, does ‘social media strategy’ or, indeed, ‘social media strategists’. Waste of money and several perfectly good workstations.

As an aside, I saw that Dominos Pizza were speaking at a conference recently – one of those that hapless comms and marketing people like us pay oodles of cash to go to on the off-chance we might learn something. And they were there to talk about the issues around employees posting uncontrolled video footage on YouTube and other social media. Talk about shutting the door after the horse had buggered off – and what did anyone think they were going to learn from Dominos, anyway. I was amazed.

Finally for today, may I express my dismay that the digital/social media strategists employed, at great cost, by Coke, appear to have managed to get permission for a group of people to post to social media sites (probably FaceBook and Twitter – as the only ones that anyone really knows) without going through the PR department. Someone could do with talking to Dominos, now I think about it.

I love the smell of impending disaster in the morning, it smells of – hmmm – Meat Feast?  Or is it random brown sugary liquid? I’m not sure………..

Social Media – The Twitter Crack’d 2

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, External Communications, Public Relations, Social Media and tagged , , , , , , , , , .

Those avid followers of my blog (thanks, both of you), with a decent memory, may remember a post back in June which highlighted – actually, that’s a bit grand – which focused on a piece of research done by the Harvard Business School into Twitter’s usage patterns. It seemed to show that the bulk of tweets come from a hardcore of twitterers (95:10 was the ratio, I think) and that average numbers of tweets during the lifetime of a twitterer is one.

This kinda leads us to believe that Twitter’s not really the massive phenomenon that other media – and the rash of ‘social media experts’ that has infected the face of the internet – would have you believe and – thus – it’s a bit rubbish as a marketing tool. As I’ve often said, don’t ignore social media – you’d be foolish to do so – but bear in mind that there are countless other things that you should do first (from a comms and marketing point of view).

Anyway, here’s another nail in the coffin piece of research that would seem to lead us to similar conclusions, although for different reasons. Enjoy:

http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1007208