Does social media seduce us?

Posted on July 28, 2008 by marc meyer

So you meet someone. And there is something about that someone that enthralls you. Something that makes you want to spend hours with that person. Time becomes non-existent. Food-an afterthought. Your current friends and family wonder where you have been. Why? Because you have been, in this case, sucked into social networking and social media and it’s now become this mating dance of sorts.

So the questions, have you been seduced by social media? Does it seduce us? Sure It does. Admit it, you know you have been sucked in and seduced by its offerings of endless friendships and relationships with like minded people, its cool widgets, it’s offer of making things easier so you can connect with more people etc., etc. That’s right, Social media and the public are in love with each other right now. or better yet, are infatuated with each other. The result being, we, the users, are willing to to be fed whatever social media and it’s networks want to serve us right now. We’re willing to accept it because It’s fresh right now.

The relationship is fresh. We go out with each other and we have no complaints, or if we do, we overlook them for now. In fact, we tell others about our relationship with social media. We want others to see it, we want to share it. We want them to be a part of it.

Because Social Media is that bright shiny thing. That hot new boy toy. The smoking girl you met last week.

In fact social media can do no wrong right now because social media has a lot of siblings and a lot of connections and they all are very loving and friendly and willing to go out with you too. It’s like one big brothel!

The only thing you need to bring to the table is your personal information. All you have to give up is some tiny bits of personal information that should not take to long to give up and is really not that big a deal and you’ll be back doing your social media thing in no time etc etc. And based on the fact that it’s not that big a deal, you go ahead. And you forget it about it.

Problem is, the relationship may sour. or even already might be starting to sour. Most do, at least to the extent that 50% of all marriages fail. So why will this one be any different? You’re realizing that maybe it wasn’t as sexy and shiny and new as you thought. So now what?

You’ve just given yourself, all of yourself over to this relationship, and now it has soured. What do you do?

Hell it’s social media, just go join another one. Go find another social networking group. Think about it. A relationship ends, you mourn, you pick yourself up, you dust yourself off and you go and find another relationship to jump into. But now you’re wizer, you know better, you’ve learned from all of the previous relationships and now you know exactly what you are looking for. The question is. Who will be in charge of this relationship? You, or the other? Who’s calling the shots? Assuming that both have learned from their previous relationships, here are 11 things that both parties should be aware before entering into any new social media, social networking union.

Your next relationship with social media will be better than the previous one because of a few factors. 1) You know what you’re looking for 2) The relationship is based more on trust and understanding of each other 3) The relationship involves even more communication 4) You are available for each other all the time 5) There will never be a betrayal 6) Self improvement will be mutual 7) It will be important to share with others 8) Mutual Respect will be necessary 9) We promise to be the person we are, and not the person we wished to be 10) Our privacy will always be our privacy 11) My data is mine and not yours and when I want it back, I mean it I want it back. Don’t make me jump through a bunch of bullshit hoops to get it back either!

So in answer to my question. Yes, social media does seduce us. It always will, but fool me once shame on you, fool me twice and shame on me.

Social Media is not…Part II

Posted on July 24, 2008 by marc meyer

As if having over 60 ideas, suggestions and observations of what “social media is not” was not enough, I now add an additional 25 responses from Linkedin and Twitter.

Social Media is Not

65. Your free answer generator if you run out of inspiration. After receiving this reply I responded that the person could do better than that and thus I received the following:

Social Media is not about individuals, it only is about its own gods and half gods. Since I am not a half god nor a god, it is quite obvious people would not know me. Social Media is also not definable since it is everything you want it to be and everything anyone else wants it to be. People who like to catch it in a few lines do not understand Social Media, since Social Media is more than some definitions and words alone it is a journey that never ends.

66. … A one way thing.

Be prepared for lots of criticism and people who have a lot of time and every motivation to make sure that what you are is accurate and true. If it is not… well we have all seen the examples.

Accept that any company/ product/ person that ventures into social media will be scrutinised and critisized.

While some shy away from social media for this reason exactly increasingly there is a realisation that abstaining is not a risk – free strategy. Getting out there and being honest might be scary but it certainly gains you a lot in terms of engagement and reputation.

67. … A substitute for a real social life.

68. …Doing much other than seriously turning everyone into a marketing expert to our global detriment.

When I mentioned that I would like to have him expound on this, and suggested perhaps he look at it differently, I received this heated response that diverts into a global political rant..

I’ll look at it as I please, thanks.

Anyone who tells me “you need to look at it like this” needs to look at, well, that kind of language and is a function of that culture.

The only reason I “need to look at it like this” is because your professional reputation depends upon the success of social networking. Otherwise what I said wouldn’t be such a threat to your well-being. None intended, but that’s what drives a statement like that.

True, social networking is not all bad, and they’re not all great either.

Where is all this communication getting us? It is a bourgeois pastime, a distraction from crippling debt, anti-intellectualism, fake dionesianism, and while on the surface, available to everyone for low-low rates, is yet another competition for time and energy towards things that really matter, like democracy and true personal freedom.

Our world is entering what appears to be an even greater period of vapid leadership than ever before. Why? Because MySpacers can’t see that Mr. Obama needs a team of 300 economic advisors. Bill Clinton could argumentatively engage that number in a blind-chess-tourney. All they see is a well-tailored marketing message.

Our present democratic contender is a direct result of the attitudes arising from social networking. He provides a message that is well tailored, yet inappropriate for our circumstance (he got prominence from unenlightened religious/political leader Oprah Winfrey, won the nomination on an anti-war platform, and having won it and being confronted with the economy, he’s got nothing. Nada. Zippo.)

We need a seriously deep, connected technocrat/intellectual to undo the ravages of this prior administration. This generation is going to continue to fail to see that all that glitters is not gold, and not all that’s being sold is worth buying. Unfortunately we’ll be worse off than with Hillary because they don’t know how to identify with what’s needed on a basis of principle over personality. And that’s the big, big problem.

At that point, I wished him well in his future endeavors!

69. The greatest thing since sliced bread, and it gets just as stale over the course of a few days. 🙂

70. The only internet marketing strategy.

71. An avenue to “push” your product.

72. A replacement for all marketing strategies and tools like ad, pr, print, tv, radio or other methods for a company.

73. Is not a replacement for good customer service or a good reliable product or product support.

74. Is not going to directly reflect $$ at the cash register in a short term– nor can it always be quantified in terms of dollars but actually name, brand, product recognition. Just as a tv ad might not reflect in significant sales, the social media should be dealt with in the same manner.

75. Is not static. It’s going to evolve so staying only on myspace.com isn’t the only place. There are other options that can employ social media within the context of the marketing strategy tools.

76. Is not just about the number of friends on whatever site you choose to be part of– you actually have to participate and you actually need to have a great product to deliver. It’s not just about the sizzle, you need to have the steak that goes with it. (as in show me the beef)

77. … Is _not_ a mass media

78. … Something you can do in your spare time.

79. …Addictive

80. … Going to make you any money this year. Or next year. Or the year after that. Or the year after that, or the year after that, or even *gasp* the year after that — unless you’re kin to Rupert Murdoch.

81. …A goal in and of itself.

82. …new.

It’s something you and your organization are already doing, only without applying the “social media” tag to it. It’s using <insert platform here> to make it easier for people to reach each other.

The concept is ancient both from conceptual and technological aspects. What’s new is the shiny implementations popping up… and actual mainstream acceptance. It’s now officially cool to be connected.

83. …Owned by marketing, nor PR, nor advertising.

84. …A destination, it’s a tool.

85. … Accurate and qualitative enough to trust.

86. …Is not a solution to every communication or PR problem

87. …Is not just for kids

88. …Is not a replacement for developing a solid strategy and should not stand alone as a tactic

89. …Is not a new way of thinking, it’s a new way of doing.

As you can see, the perceptions sometimes do not mix with reality. I engaged in some really lively discussions on this topic and will cause me to create an interesting slide presentation on the subject. I’m amazed as well at how skewed and actually how misinformed some of the respondents were. You can also see, where some are completely fed up with even talking about social media anymore. Their loss I suppose. In the end, as I was telling someone earlier, in a few years, we might not even recognize the monolith that is social media as it evolves into iterations that we haven’t even thought of yet.

26 people you could trust in the social media space.

Posted on July 22, 2008 by marc meyer

In the second part of my series of trust in social media, I thought it might be a good thing to mention and highlite 26 people in the social media/marketing space whose thoughts I appreciate and whose knowledge and willingness to share that knowledge I value. I also thought it more important that it should be a list of people who would do their best to be a straight shooter, tell the truth, and give you what you need, not what they want you to have. Big Difference.

If I were you and you were either looking for that list of people whos blogs and companies that you could refer to on a daily basis or just starting out in trying to understand what social media is as it pertains to marketing, then this list is a good start. Not all of them swim in social media waters only, but it is still a very strong list for you to work off of.

So who do you trust? Who’s words do you take to heart and try to apply to your businesses? Who motivates you to no end?

The trust factor in social media marketing

Posted on July 21, 2008 by marc meyer

I don’t know how much I reference Seth Godin but I guess it’s for good reason. I like what he says about marketing, because he uses a ton of analogies and for me, thats a good thing. I need examples, real world or not, but I need colorful descriptive analogous ways for me to wrap my arms around complex ideas and simple ethereal notions.

With that being said, I was reading something over the weekend and was re-reading an old post by him in which he says the following:

Worry about people with passion and people with lots of friends. You need both for ideas to spread.

I’ve been writing alot lately about social media experts and last week actually compiled a list of what social media is not and subsequently received a tremendous amount of answers, but essentially the underlying theme is this: if you were to couple the question of what social media is not with the experts that are the in the social media marketing space, what you and i are looking for is TRUST. Trust that what I’m hearing is legit. Trust that what I’m reading is applicable. Trust that I can utilize social media to connect with my audience, my customers, and my users. Trust that social media is not just a buzzword. Trust that social media and it’s experts are not just caught up in the jetstream.

One of the other underlying themes of social media marketing, as a marketer, as someone dipping their toes in the proverbial waters of soaicl media, is how do you segment what you are hearing, what you are reading and what who you are listening to?, How do you separate fact from fiction, How do you know? How do you know what you know,? How do you know they know? I know it sounds sort of like a comedy routine but…

I know that there are some companies out there that do it right but Im going to guess that for every company that does it right, there are 5 who say they can and never have, in their efforts to capitolize on the trend. But trust in any setting business or otherwise, determines the outcome of any engagement, it requires a tremndous leap of faith. Just like marriage. or any type of relationship for that matter.

So going forward, as you venture in, who do you trust/ and why should you trust them? Does someone who has expert status warrant your trust? It reminds me of the time where our company needed a Cisco engineer to come out and do some work for us. At the time, his rate might have been $150 an hour. The company said, they were sending out the very best they had, their heavy hitter… So we waited, and about an hour after he was supposed to show, in walks this guy- a bit disheveled, sunglasses on, mumbles that he’s from Cisco. He comes with nothing, no laptop, no pen, paper, nothing, knapsack. I repeate…nothing! Oh and he wreaks of alcohol… First impression? Not so good… But it gets better.

So the guy asks about 5 or 6 questions sits down at a terminal, works for under an hour, gets up and says,”You’re all set”, and leaves. WTF? Blink blink.. ala South Park. We’re screwed.

Bottom Line? It was done perfectly. He was a heavy hitter, he did his thing and he did it well. Though outward impressions notwithstanding, this guy rocked the house.

The morals of the story are many. Do you go with your gut, let them do their thing, and sit back and see what they produce? Perception is not always reality? Go with what people tell you and trust them?. Word of mouth, in this case was correct? Company hype was dead on? It’s ok to trust the disheveled engineer whos breath wreaks of alcohol? Cisco engineers rock?

Ok so you’re asking “So what are the parallels to social media marketing you ask? Well, per Seths point, when deciding what to believe and not believe, in regards to social media you can go 2 ways. You can listen to the person who has a huge following and is passionate or you can listen to the person who talks the talk on their website but does not have much more than tha,t that can be substantiated.

Case in point, when reading about social media marketing on blog sites i would want to read someones blog who has been around no less than a year or longer and or someone who has a pretty solid base of followers and is passionate and or someone who might be on the agency side who ‘does” or “is” the social media marketing person at that agency and has chosen to blog about it.

Who would you trust? Who would I trust? That will be in part II

Stupid corporate social networking site #312

Posted on July 18, 2008 by marc meyer

This just in:

Cats Flocking to new social networking site!

In the category of “I have a great idea and I know management will go along with it”, we have the Purina Breeze cat litter social networking site. Courtesy of Marshall Kilpatrick over at ReadWriteWeb

Feel free to shoot me other examples of where Corporate America just did not get it right.

The definitive working list of what social media is not

Posted on July 17, 2008 by marc meyer

I had, awhile back, compiled a list of what i thought social media was not. This morning while exchanging tweets, Beth Harte mentioned that Amber Naslund had just dropped a post on what social media isn’t, which led me to thinking: “why don’t we create a list of what social media is not”! There are so many lists and blog posts out there that are touting what it is, that maybe we should clarify and quantify what it is not. I would like this to be a continuous work in progress and need everyone to contribute as little or as much as possible. So here goes:

From Search Marketing Gurus we have the following:

Social Media Isn’t: Easy
Social Media Isn’t: Fast
Social Media Isn’t: A Substitute for Sound SEO Practices
Social Media Isn’t: A Substitute for Sound PPC Practices
Social Media Isn’t: A Practice to be Done by Interns
Social Media Isn’t: Another Place to Distribute Your Press Release
Social Media Isn’t: Something That Will Work if Your Site is “Broken”
Social Media Isn’t: Something To Send Out Mass Emails For
Social Media Isn’t: Something You Can Do Without Participation
Social Media Isn’t: Something You Can Do in Disguise

Courtesy of Rachel Happe we have: 11. Social media is not community

B.L. Ochman says that:

12. Social media isn’t a one-shot deal

13. Social media isn’t a technique

14. It’s not a short-term project

15. It’s not an experiment,

16. It’s not an event,

17. It’s not a quick fix. and

18. It’s not something you throw money at.

Brian Solis tells us that Social media is not:

19. The final frontier

Robert Young from GigaOm, mentioned 2 years ago that

20. Social Media is not Mass Media.

Is that still true? I think it’s not true any longer, nor might have never been. Its perhaps a function or channel of mass media though, or slowly becoming that.

John Gray writing for imediaconnection wrote that:

21. Social media is not just for kids, and I’m down with that!

Don Schindler from Media Sauce Blog tells us that:

22. Social media is not advertising or

23. It’s not marketing, it’s about connections.

Ike Piggot over at the Now is Gone blog mentions that,

24. Social media is not a commodity.

According to the Deal,

25. Social media is not the next bubble. But that was 3 years ago.

26. Social media is not a direct response marketing channel according to the 10e20 blog

27. Social Media may not be all that it’s cracked up to be, this from Jennifer Laycock over at searchengineguide. What the hell does “all that it’s cracked up to be” actually mean? I never really understood that statement.

28. Social media is not about Links, this from Li Evans

29. For teens, social media is not technology, it’s life!

30. Social media is not a free for all, thanks Luke Armour

Brian Magierski mentions that:

31. Social media is not just another marketing channel.

Laura Porto Stockwell believes that

32. Social media is not new

Thanks in part to Scoble we know that Social Media is not:

33. Newspapers

34. Magazines

35. Television

36. Radio

37. Books

38. CDs

39. DVDs

40. A box of photos

50. Physical, paper mail and catalogs and

51. Yellow Pages

And here are mine:

52. Social media is not up to them, it is up to you and your voice

53. Social media is not predicated on many to many

54. Social media is not one to one, but it can be.

55. Social media is not closed to anyone

56. Social media is not calm, sedate, unresponsive.

57. Social media is not passive

58. Social media is not laryngitis

59. Social media is not mainstream, yet

60. Social media is not static

And here are Amber Naslund’s:

61. Social media is not Show and Tell

62. Social media is not a Popularity and Numbers Contest

63. Social media is not a Silver Bulllet

64. Social media is not just for “Experts”

Ok so I think 64 is a pretty good start. What am I missing here? Feel free to add yours or, feel free to tell me where some of these might actually be wrong. Let’s talk about it!

LinkedIn in a nutshell

Posted on July 16, 2008 by marc meyer

The folks from Common Craft have done it again. Here is a short video that demystifies LinkedIn.

Social Media slides you can relate to

Posted on July 15, 2008 by marc meyer

For the sake of virgin ears, the actual title of this slide presentation is “What the F**K is Social Media”? and I wish I could have taken credit for this but it came from alisa leonard hansen’s blog site titled Socialized or thewebissocial, which came from Marta Kagan take your pick. Subscribe to both their sites, they both have a good take on whats up. Though I am down with Marta’s genius. Per this, it’s amazing as you work through the slides how large the numbers are and yet how they ( social networks and social media per se) have not even scatched the surface.

Social Networks: The path you take is equal to the effort you make!

Posted on July 14, 2008 by marc meyer

So for shits and giggles the other day, I decided to do a search in LinkedIn for people with my name Marc Meyer. I think I found 13. I thought, in their infinite wisdom, that maybe they would appreciate linking to me. There was a teacher, a sales rep, another techy person, someone in real estate, and a fireman to name a few. I only got 2 people who agreed to do it, probabaly because they either a) got a little freaked out and thought it was a glitch in the LI system or b) don’t use LI that much or c) were worried about ID theft? d) did not appreciate the irony of linking to themselves…

Marc Meyer is now linked to Marc Meyer.

Odd to think that there are lots of “us” running around out there. But this thought led me to Google where I subsequently “Googled” my name and did a couple of searches on Reunion.com and PeopleFinders and came to find out that there are about 46 of my likenamed brethren running around. Before you say anything else, I guarantee that YOU have “Googled” yourself at least once. In fact, I am willing to bet that some of you have RSS feeds set up to notify you when your name is mentioned somewhere. Relax, it’s no big deal. I’ve done the former but not the latter.

Back to my point on why this is relevant?

I’ll tell you why. I have spoken on numerous occasions and in numerous blog posts and to numerous clients about what will happen in the social media space in the future. I have said that what you will see is the “nichefication” of the space. Where large social networks will splinter off into smaller distinct groups. It’s already happening, in fact if you look at the current number of networking groups within the social networking site of LinkedIn, you will see that there are currently roughly 24,000 distinct groups and counting! Thats smaller social networking groups within the environs of the larger ones.

What does this have to do with me and my 46 counterparts?

Well in theory, we all have something in common, in this case, my name. So in theory, it might be worth it to network with people who have my exact name. Maybe not, since I haven’t really thought through the whole identity theft thing. But what could a social networking group consisting of 46 people with the same exact name do? Maybe not much, but they do have something very in common and that is essentially how people are now coming together today, as we speak, in these groups. They find a common thread or link and they build upon it. Through these connections, things happen. Conversations are started and relationships occur. As I have said in the past, we all want to run with our pack, our brood, our peeps. There is a comfort level that is there with people of like minds and backgrounds, so what is more common a starting point than your name?

So do I contact the 46 Marc Meyer’s? Maybe not, since the undertaking, the leadership and the roll out of something like that would fall on my shoulders. Perhaps I could start something on NIng and see where it might end up. But the bottom line is this, and this is what you need to be thinking about going forward: You need or rather you should try and find the group that best fits you and what defines you rather than settling for the stadiums or oceans that are the current state of social networks.

So do you want to run with your own/ or be a part of this large melange of different kingdoms, phylums, classes, genus’s and species?

Or this?

And in the end
The love you take
Is equal to the love you make.

I had to rework the quote “In the end the love you take is equal to the love you make” which is essentially the Beatles closing statement. It is the last lyric on the last album they recorded. Let It Be. Though it is certainly not the last line or epitaph for social networks and all that they have to offer, it can certainly define the future for Social Networks. So yes, “and in the end, the path you take, is equal to the effort you make.” Now more than ever, you determine you.

Social Media Marketing

Posted on July 7, 2008 by marc meyer

We talk, I talk, and everyone else talks a lot about social media, social networks and the impact it’s having on our online lives. Right now it has yet to hit critical mass, though you might not think that by looking at the lastest numbers.

With that being said, there are tons of those who wish to be on the inside looking out rather than vice versa. And those are the people that “work” for marketing companies, ad agencies, and Fortune 1000 companies. They have been approached by their bosses and they’ve been charged with figuring this social media thing out and how they, as a company, can leverage it for their benefit.

Problem is, trying to sort through the ones who have, the ones who claim they have, and the ones who wish they’d had. I recently encountered a company that HAS in a big way. If you have not yet determined how you are going to use social media for your company, perhaps your first step should be to undertsand the many uses. Once you see the many ways that it can be used to either brand a product, brand a company, or drive traffic, sales and eyeballs, then you can start to figure out what the big picture is of social media. But to understand the big picture, as I said earlier, you need to talk with people who HAVE done it.

I had the privledge of sitting down with Jason Breed from Neighborhood America awhile back to discuss their award winning Elavate platform, and their business model in general. A quick blurb about NA, Neighborhood America was recently recognized for Best Social Networking Solution by The Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) Winning a Prestigious CODiE Award.

Here’s some quick perspective for you; More than 1,100 CODiE nominations were submitted by 600 companies in a total of 76 categories. A panel of expert judges narrowed the field to 340 nominees, from which the 2008 CODiE winners were chosen.

The point of this post is this, if you are looking for guidance, direction, and advice from someone like Jason or a company like Neighborhood America who is smack dab in the middle of social media, and social media marketing, then you need to look no further. Of course, I know they are not the only company out there that can roll out a solution for you, but as a starting point, it sure is a good start. Seriously, if you were to decide right now, today that you were going to go out and evaluate social media companies, how are you going to do it? What will it be based on? What is your criteria? I do recall awhile back that Chris Brogan created a cheat sheet on how to evaluate a company for social media marketing services, you may want to check it out. At the least, Chris writes a good blog on all things social.

From a social media marketing standpoint, you may also want to check out Scott Monty’s blog site as well. You may find it usefull depending on your grasp of social media.

All of this though makes me think that perhaps my next worthy post should be a a listing of companies poised to help you figure out what your social media marketing initiative will be. If you know of some other worthy companies, I am certainly willing to listen. Besides, isn’t that part of the conversation that we are all engaged in right now?

One more thing for J Breed…. Go bulls…