social media marketing

Social Media – Really Worth the Risk?

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

Came across this paragraph this morning. I’m not going to go into the context – suffice it to say it was the conclusion of a commentary on Barack Obama’s ‘off-the-record’ comment that Kanye West is a ‘jackass’. (Which he is, but that’s another song, as they say.)

 Anyway – it’s not new – it’s what every comms practitioner knows, simply updated for the social media age in which we live.

 “In today’s wired world, every bystander with a camera phone, a blog or a Twitter account can play reporter and turn an off-hand comment into a worldwide news story. For almost any setting, the best policy today is not to say, write or do anything that you don’t want to see in the newspaper tomorrow, on the TV news tonight or on Twitter or YouTube in the next two minutes.”

 So – given that we take this truth to be self-evident – how does this square with official employee use of social media? Already this week I’ve come across – and published – the quite extraordinary assertion that “….since this type of communication is often viewed as less formal than other (sic), there is increased risk for inadvertent disclosure”. And we know, from some very high-profile examples, that – above and beyond inadvertent screw-ups – there are also employees who come over all Tourette’s when confronted by Twitter or YouTube.

 As I’ve said already, I’ve changed my mind. Doing nothing and hoping it will go away is not an option. Every organisation, by now, should either have, or be giving thought to, a social media policy. Preferably one that doesn’t entertain the notion of allowing employees free rein to post to social media either during company time, from company machinery or on behalf of the body corporate. The sanctions against anyone doing it should be quite draconian.

 I was, frankly, open-mouthed when I found out that WholeFoods has over 1,370,000 followers on Twitter. It is extraordinary. I was reasonably shaken when I saw Starbucks had nearly 294,000. Even allowing for the large proportion who became followers on their first visit to Twitter and have never visited again, that still a lot of potential dialogue and a lot of room for error.

 I know that Ford and Coke have created social media ambassadors – carefully trained, briefed and monitored social media spokespeople – to deal with their respective 15,000 and 8,500 followers. I’m presuming that WholeFoods and Starbucks has done the same.

 Best Buy, with its Twelpforce, hasn’t and the experiment is not considered, universally, a success. They’ve had some Tourette’s incidents with some of their employee Tweeters.

 The point is, I guess, that I’m not convinced of the value-add of social media. If it didn’t exist, would anyone actually bother to invent it? What I am convinced of is the increasing amount of time, effort and budget that is going to have to be invested in it – and its ancillary activities like training and monitoring – if those companies who have so bravely (and so very quickly) embraced the technology are going to keep on top of it.

 I am also convinced that the rise of social media has introduced a new, and very elevated, level of risk into external and internal corporate communications that we, the gatekeepers, ignore at our peril. As social media cannot be (properly) monitored and isn’t regulated, so it is difficult to create a plan for its use or target the message.

 Every organisation should, by now, either have, or be working on, a social media policy. And it should aim to restrict corporate usage. Before the trouble starts.

Social Media – In Cyberspace, No-one Listens to You Scream

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

A long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, I was working for a company in relation to whom the use of the phrase ‘set in its ways’ was being kind. It was a company run by quite elderly gentlemen in suits (even those who weren’t quite elderly somehow were, if you see what I mean) who sat around in old wood-panelled offices and once a year, at Christmas, stood outside the gates and threw sovereigns to the barefoot orphans in the snow. OK, they didn’t, but it was THAT sort of company. The company made its money by enticing people to its premises and selling them intoxicating beverages and a selection of (mostly) fried food and, sometimes, a bed for the night.

In 1999, the world changed. Almost overnight, the talk was of internet entrepreneurs and dotcom business and simply extraordinary amounts of money were being bandied around in connection with the aformentioned entrepreneurs and businesses. This, we were told, was the future – there was to be no looking back and before very long, everything was going to be done over the internet. Shopping, socialising, consulting, meeting – everything. Don’t argue, we were told, it is inevitable.

Shiny Object Syndrome took hold. Hitherto rational companies started re-inventing themselves as dotcoms. Massive investments were made – in technologies that no-one fully understood and were not able to fully leverage or utilise. The company that I was working for was the subject of an article in the FT – would it be able to reinvent itself as a dotcom – how would the inevitable change to a digital way of life affect its business.

I’d like to claim that we were clever and anticipated the collapse of the house of cards, but we weren’t, we were simply unprepared, and being simply unprepared, we told the truth. We were banking on the fact that there would never be a transition to an online way of life. People need people need people. Sure, this new-fangled webby thing would help people find information and organise themselves and communicate – but there’d never be any substitute for meeting up over an intoxicating beverage. And, as history tells us, we were right.

Fast forward to 2007. I have been reincarnated into the exhibition industry – luckily as a corporate communicator and not a small stone which is probably what the Buddhists would have preferred. I learn very quickly that the exhibitions – or rather the ‘events’ – industry is way behind any other 21st century industry sector to the point that it is almost as if the 21st century hadn’t actually happened. I land in this frightening landscape just as the industry notices t’interweb and freezes like a resident of Norfolk caught in headlights – it’s the end of events as we know them, they shriek (eventually) – everyone’s going to be doing everything online! Quick, quick – reinvent ourselves as online communities and virtual exhibitions! Cue an all-too-familiar scramble to invest in technologies that no-one fully understands and no-one can fully leverage or exploit.

Long story short – it didn’t happen. The events industry is still going strong and, the last time I looked, it was in growth. Why? Because people need people need people. They need to interact in real time, to see, to hear, to touch, to smell – to experience. Real business does not get done on-line. Real business is done over a handshake, when you’ve seen the whites of the eyes, or the cut of the jib or whatever cliched metaphor tickles your fancy.

And here we are in 2009. Many would have us believe that social media is the next big thing. That without it, as communicators, as businesses, as brands, we’re missing out and – in the future – we’ll lose ground. And it is with a disorienting and rather queasy-making sense of deja-vu that I see otherwise sane companies running around throwing money at social media strategists, buying technology and expertise that they don’t fully understand and can’t fully leverage or exploit.

In the meantime – because people need people need people, because the internet is a lonely place, because you cannot guarantee that anyone is listening – the social media gurus themselves are organising live events (‘Tweetups’ – a term coined by Scott Monty, a man with either too much time on his hands, or no need for sleep) so that they can meet, interact with, see, touch and smell (not too much smell, please) their followers and the people they follow.

This is, of course, an activity that’s facilitated by social media. No issues with that. On a social/personal basis, it makes sense. For a brand, corporation or organisation however – it doesn’t.

Cut out the middleman – in this case social media – and use the budget, time and resource that you’ve liberated against experiential activity. Meet with your audiences. Let them touch and feel and taste your products.

Or, at the very least, take them down the pub.

Social Media – The ‘Meatloaf Equation’

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

Sorry. It’s very easy to poke fun and, as I’m the sort of guy who likes ‘easy’, if I get the opportunity, then I will seize it with both hands.

Today I’d like to draw your attention to mashable.com and an article that was published in January this year entitled ’40 of the best Twitter brands and the people behind them’. You can read it if you like – never say I don’t give you anything.

To cut a long story short because, for some reason, I’m just not that into it today, it doesn’t make edifying reading. In fact, if you look behind the breathless and rather candyfloss tone of the article and examine the numbers, you’ll see that the quantity of followers for each of these brands (the 40 best Twitter brands, mind) is minute. And undoubtedly, there’s quite a lot of effort (even if it’s by one person, in their spare time) going into serving this audience – effort which, simply by the laws of math, isn’t making much in the way of a difference.

Anyway, I recognise that eight months is a long time in social media and there’s been a lot of growth, so – and it’s all my inherent laziness would allow – I picked on one of the 40 best Twitterers (Scott Monty at Ford) and compared followers now, with followers then. Mr Monty is now up to over 25,000 followers, compared to 8,500 in January. Which is roughly a three-fold increase and – on that basis – pretty impressive.

However – and anyone who’s been here before will know that there is always an ‘however’.  Current data says there are 45 million registered Twitter users globally. 10% of that would be 4.5 million. 1% would be 450,000. 0.1% would be 45,000. Ford – and a fair number of the other 40 best – have approximately 0.05% of the available audience. Factor in the statistics for Twitter account usage and attrition and it’s a very, very small number indeed.

It’s an example of the ‘Meatloaf Equation’, which goes something like “Two outta three ain’t bad.” “Yes it is. It’s 66%. It’s crap. A ‘B’ grade at best. Must try harder, boy.”

What’s my point? All that effort put into social media strategies for a possible audience of 25,000. Most of whom are untraceable and leave you with no information about themselves. Many of whom don’t actually exist (in that their accounts lapse as soon as they start them up – the average account, total number of tweets from which is one). And very, very few of whom are going to repay you – for these are brands after all – with a purchase.

’40 of the best Twitter brands and the people behind them’? Self-congratulatory back-slapping for those in the gang. Otherwise – vapid and meaningless.

Monetising Social Media – The Return of The Snake-Oil Salesmen

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

Couldn’t let this one go without some sort of comment.

Yesterday I was forwarded an email invitation to attend the breathlessly-billed ‘first ever Marketing (magazine) live webcast on monetising social media’. The only good thing about it is that it’s free – but, working on the principle that there is no such thing as a free lunch, I would imagine that sales messages are going to be sloshing over its gunwales and that the ‘highest rated speakers in this space’ are going to be ‘social media strategists’ one and all, representing the very finest in social media marketing service provision. But I’m just cynical about these things.

Anyway, it’s a free world, so if you’re interested, clickety-dickety here.

 However, the bit that I couldn’t let pass without comment was this:

“Sites like YouTube, Twitter and FaceBook have been real cash cows for some marketers, but what are the secrets of their success?”

Sorry? Who, exactly, are these marketers for whom social media has been such a cash cow? I’m aware of a number of brands/companies/organisations that have pumped a lot of money IN to social media marketing – but I really don’t know of any who’ve found social media to be a ‘cash cow’. (And don’t get me wrong – I’d be very interested by, and grateful for, any good examples.)

Or are the marketers that have found social media to be a cash cow those who carped the diem and reinvented themselves as social media marketers – and are now rolling in fees chucked at them by brands/companies and organisations desperate not to miss out on what they’ve been told is the ‘next big thing’?

Social Media and the Unbearable Smugness of Tweeting

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

Anyway, by some horrible mischance, someone stumbled upon this blog and that someone was responsible for the content of a US website, Ragan, which is a resource for the PR and coporate communications industries. Cutting a long story short, this person asked whether I’d mind if she published one of my blog posts – this one – and of course I said ‘no’, because, well, the internet, it’s a free-for-all, isn’t it. So she did – perform clickety here – and, my, well – read the commentary for yourself.

I took a number of things out of this experience, and I think one or two of them are worth having a look at in a bit more detail.

My original post was, in part, prompted by an article in the Wall Street Journal, which talked about big firms – such as Ford and Coke – adopting a policy (or considering doing so) which would allow their employees to post to social media sites, on behalf of the company, without going through the communications department first. For one reason or another – you can read it for yourself – I felt this was a bad idea, and I said so.

Plenty of people disagreed with me – plenty of people felt that the age of the employee is upon us, that vox populi, vox dei and that taking away an employee’s unfettered access to social media was like taking away their telephone or email account. This is such a trite piece of bollocks that I won’t even bother to get into it here, as was the idea that by recommending that staff access to social media should be controlled, I was in some way denying the fact that employees have a life outside of work. (Of course they do. Of course they talk to other people about their work, Just not – normally – to hundreds, maybe thousands, of strangers in a virtual environment.)

In addition to the cyber-hippies and the foaming new media evangelists there was, however, comment from both Ford and Coke – authored by the very people mentioned in the original Wall Street Journal article. This was fascinating and I was genuinely delighted that a) they’d found my article and b) they’d taken the time to respond.

On the back of their responses I learned that the WSJ had over-egged the cake slightly. What both firms are doing is less about giving employees free rein to post whatever, whenever and more about creating a network of hand-picked, well-trained social media ambassadors, with the ability to talk about the areas in which they specialise and the understanding to know when to refer an enquiry to someone else (this last is Coke-specific). This is great and sounds very wise – but is very different to what is being preached/recommended by those in the grip of social media fever.

I then went on to consider Ford and Coke’s responses further – and the fact that their reactions had been very rapid – and the fact that their reactions were both posted by the senior social media guy. I’ll leave it with you to decide, but did I detect a slight overreaction? I mean, who am I – and what do my opinions matter? Is it possible that – somewhere – these guys are worried about the substance of social media and its true value to big corporate? Might it just be that they don’t want too many questions asked? Are they the guardians of the horrid secret? That the Emperor is in the buff? As I say – it’s for you to decide.

So, having accepted the brickbats, I conducted a personal brand health check (and if you don’t do this already, you should be doing it). I googled myself. Specifically, I googled ‘jeremy probert social media’. And, there I was. My point of view was being roundly condemned on – ooooooh – at least three online fora.

But most interestingly – for me, anyway (I know, I know – don’t get out much) – was that Scott Monty (the Social Media type at Ford) had tweeted to the effect that he couldn’t find me on Twitter. The implication being (and picked up by one of his fellow twats) that if I didn’t have a Twitter account, then I was in no position to criticise social media.

Again, this is such trite bollocks that I won’t even dignify it. But I will share an opinion. I do wander around social media sites a lot and I do find myself on Twitter on a regular basis. Sometimes I enjoy it – there are some interesting people, sharing interesting stuff – always, however, individual, always unbranded, very often comedy. And then there’s what appears to be quite a large majority, using Twitter as an unconscious ego trip, basking in the delusion that someone actually cares who they are, where they are or what they do.

The research into Twitter usage – and the use of other social media outlets – is well-documented. I don’t have to tell you what it says.

Social Media – Vox Populi, Vox Dei?

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

Those of you who’re regulars here will know my views on social media (blah, blah blah, don’t ignore it, yadayadayada, better ways of spending your money, time and effort) and you may aso have some passing awareness of how those views have got me into some small amount of trouble (mainly in the States, unsurprisingly) with those who see Social Media as the Next Big Thing, a digital messiah, a cure-all and something that will change life as we know it. (Don’t get me wrong, it might. Who knows what it might do. Ah – yes – that’s it – no-one knows what it might do. Which is the problem in grasping it with both hands too readily. It might be poisonous.)

Anyway, there’s this school of thought that says that the nature of the contract between audience and brand or organisation is changing. Has, in fact, changed. It says that the contract is now – because of social media – between the audience and the employees of the brand or organisation. That you should mobilise your workforce. That you should allow your employees free access to social media, to post on your brand/organisation’s behalf.

What the school of thought is saying, in summary, is ‘vox populi, vox dei’. Now, as any fule kno, if vox populi, vox dei, then the devil’s in the detail. But it goes further than that. The quotation ‘vox populi. vox dei’ is but part of a larger quotation:

“Nec audienti sunt qui solet docere, ‘Vox populi, vox dei’; cum tumultuositas vulgi semper insanitas proxima est.”

The literal translation of this is: “Do not listen to those who are accustomed to teach [claim], ‘The voice of the people is the voice of God’, because the tumult of the masses is always close to insanity.”

I rest my case, m’lud.

Social Media – Come Connect With Me

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

Came across a blog this week – all about social media, social media usage, social media marketing, written by one o’ they new-fangled social media marketing strategy gurus.

At the end of it, he signed off by saying “connect with me on: Twitter, Jaiku, LinkedIn, Tumbir, Pownce, Plaxo, Friendfeed or Facebook’.

J*sus H Chr*st, I thought. Who knew there were so many social media sites? (Well, maybe you did, but I’d never heard of Jaiku, Tumbir or Pownce.) Do we need this many? Is it sustainable? What’s the difference between them? How can you keep up with all of them and have any sort of life?

My suspicion is that they’re little more than the result of the social media doughnut being sliced ever-more thinly in order to stretch it out and make it last a little longer.

And the other thing, of course, is – well – that much social media presence. It’s a bit needy, isn’t it? Smacks of real desperation.

Internal Communications – Here Be Debate!

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

This is a follow-up to the post in which I suggested that it would be an act of near-criminal lunacy to advocate (like Ford and Coke seem to be doing) giving employees of large organisations the freedom to post to social media sites, without any corporate control. (I’m paraphrasing.) Anyway, here’s another reply:

“Yes, employees need to be briefed. And the article you quote (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124925830240300343.html) states that they will be trained! So I don’t see the idea of letting trained, briefed, hand-picked employees interact with customers on the company’s behalf as a dangerous one.

 Can you imagine someone trying to Tweet on behalf of the company, answering customer service complaints/queries, etc. and having to go to PR for approval of every tweet? No – you pick the right person to tweet and train them so they understand the limits of what they can say and when to get help from PR/Legal, if things get nasty or something big happens. You’re talking about responding to a lot of “I like coke better than pepsi” “why does BK serve Pepsi and not Coke” types of tweets.

 Also, the Domino’s example is one where employees weren’t tweeting or videoing on behalf of the company. Running all official Dominos Tweets and posts through PR wouldn’t have stopped it. And certainly, this was a crisis situation and professionals handled it – I don’t think Dominos let just anyone respond on the company’s behalf.

 I see the Domino’s case as an example of how easy it is for what’s happening internally (especially the bad stuff) to go public, rather than a reason to try and stop employees from talking about work. And I don’t believe it’s possible for a company nowadays to maintain 100% control of messages that go public.

 One of my favorite reads is the Authentic Enterprise report by the A W Page Society: http://www.awpagesociety.com/images/uploads/AE_Summary_4.pdf

Talks about how the walls are dissolving and what a company says externally has to match the way they really are internally – authenticity is key to success. This means trusting employees and moving away from pure command and control.

 Last thought: social media is conversational and personal. An individual needs to post – imagine if a company ran an ‘official’ Twitter stream with no person’s name, only press releases and ‘we’re so great’ messages. It would be a flop and would turn people off. The companies seeing a positive response to their efforts are those who let the customer service rep/pr person/exec be themselves and talk about the company (within a set of guidelines).

 My twenty cents!”

Great reply – and worth responding. 

The WSJ article actually says ‘some companies are training staffers to broaden their social media efforts’ – this is journalese for ‘I’m about to introduce two examples of companies that have told me they’re going to start letting their employees post to social media’. The companies themselves – Ford and Coke – talk more in terms of ‘teaching employees how to use sites’ and ‘authorizing’ employees to post without recourse to the company’s PR staff. This does not automatically imply training programmes for nominated Tweeters and posters – and in any case, when you’re messing with a company’s reputation, even if someone has been trained, you still monitor what they do very closely. Hence briefing documents, position statements and Q&A documents every time a senior executive speaks to the media (common practice in the majority of listed companies).

The whole Customer service scenario described is, I believe, discrete from the plans of Ford and Coke. Customer Service staff normally have sheets of pre-prepared responses which they use (reactively) to answer general complaints and queries and they never stray from the script. If I’ve read the WSJ article correctly, what they’re talking about is allowing staff to be active in their use of social media – not responding to general enquiries, but posting their thoughts, opinions and commentary. This is very different, fraught with danger and would require a whole different type of training/preparation. It could be argued that one cannot train someone to post to social media – you’re talking about delicacy, sensitivity, social awareness etc etc – arguably stuff that you cannot teach.

 As for the Dominos example – the only way to have stopped that happening would have been to have had a policy in place which says Dominos franchisees and their employees do not post Dominos-related material on social media. Any franchisee or employee found in breach of the policy will be fired. Simple and – once you make a couple of examples, pour encourager les autres – highly effective. You’re right, it’s impossible for a company to be 100% in control of the message – but there are ways that the company can get close to it.

I totally agree that the external perception of the company has to reflect the internal reality – but giving employees freedom to post to social media is not the way to achieve this. A good internal comms programme – enrolling employees in the corporate goals and ethos and allowing them to understand why the messages are controlled, what the potential issues are and what the effects could be – is.

I’m afraid that trusting employees to do the right thing is a beautiful idea, but in the real world it cannot work – not because they are inherently untrustworthy, but because they are human and therefore fallible. Even letting them operate ‘within a set of guidelines’ doesn’t work – guidelines are open to interpretation and – therefore – misinterpretation.

I read somewhere recently that in today’s web-based society, a consumers’ relationship is no longer with the company or its brand, but with the company’s employees. I fundamentally disagree with this. The role of a company and its brands is to make money – for its owners, shareholders and employees and, through them, for the country/countries in which it is based. This is capitalism, this is the way of the world – let’s not get it confused with the new New Age that seems to be arising from the social media phenomenon.

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………..