1. My life in social media.

    My life in social media.


  2. Transcendent Social Media

    I’ve been thinking a ton about bridging the digital/social/real worlds lately. I love stuff like this, where online tech comes to life in offline arenas. Those that think about social media (or shit, even just media in general) as being contained within the obvious spots, are missing the possibilities out there.

    Through its new “Fashion Like” initiative, C&A has posted photos of a number of the clothing items it sells on a dedicated Facebook page, where it invites customers to “like” the ones that appeal to them. Special hooks on the racks in its bricks-and-mortar store, meanwhile, can then display those votes in real time, giving in-store shoppers a clear indication of each item’s online popularity.


  3. https://twitter.com/#!/AARP/status/178156444904988672

    https://twitter.com/#!/AARP/status/178156444904988672


  4. Nobody Cares About Your Brand’s History

    It’s been a little more than a week now since Facebook released Timeline for brands at their FMC event. This new brand page format was a terribly kept secret leading up to the event, and was more or less a quick gloss-over on the way to a multi-hour romancing of what can be most neatly summed up as “MOAR ADS” once the event itself finally arrived.

    Nevertheless, social media strategists and marketers went (and continue to go) berserk over this page restyling. Even saying things like this:

    It’s as if dozens of little corporate museums just launched on Facebook. (from AdAge)

    Now while that may technically be true, the problem is that these “little corporate museums” are likely to be about as popular as actual corporate museums. Which is to say, not very popular at all.

    As a creative type at heart, I am not immune to being in love with the possibilities of what Timeline presents, and I have no doubt that some brands will find really neat ways to leverage this format. However, as the cynical and jaded northeast pragmatist that I am, I can’t help but feel like…well, like the general public just won’t care about this in the long run.

    The two main issues that I immediately see here are:

    • Social media creation and consumption is still firmly entrenched in the present. Twitter feeds whiz by, Facebook newsfeeds update at a dizzying speed, and while every app on my phone may be recording what I’ve done (past tense), I only care about pushing the buttons and telling the world while I’m doing it (present tense). Rarely do I go back in digital time to re-live my OWN past, let alone the past of a corporation. Certainly Timeline aims to change this (as do apps like Timehop, which I admittedly love), but as shared experiences in the present tense continue to proliferate at a breakneck pace, one has to doubt if users will also have the desire to dig into corporate histories with any regularity.

    • The newsfeed still rules. When users consume content on Facebook, they are overwhelmingly doing so through their newsfeeds. And this is especially true when consuming content from “Liked” brands. Facebook Brand pages are rarely visited by fans more than once or twice on average, and being a user myself (and having watched/studied lots of other user behavior), I question whether or not those couple of visits will be spent scrolling through a deep timeline of corporate past and/or giving a shit about what that past contains.

      “Coke sponsored the 1928 Olympic Games? That’s great and all…but are there any coupons here?”.

    Coca-Cola is actually a nice proxy for the “who cares?” theory. They are the most popular brand page on Facebook with over 40mm fans, and a brand with a storied corporate past. Also one of the launch brands for Timeline, so they’ve got the benefit of a first-mover’s advantage here as well. Scroll down to their two oldest Timeline posts, and there is a sum total of 384 actions on them (comments + likes). That’s a 0.00096% “engagement rate” if you’re scoring at home. And again, this from the biggest brand, with one of the most famous histories of all.


  5. The Influencer Model Doesn’t Work

    I’ve been thinking about this a ton over the past couple of months, and have three half-written blog posts on the topic (so I suppose I have 1.5 blog posts then?).

    The generally accepted marketing approach of leveraging “influencers” to promote a product in the social media space, is shit.

    Finding people with huge followings, giving those people some special treatment in hopes that their chatter will incite the masses into action, is a fool’s errand. It’s blind yelling. It ignores so much of what makes influence…influence. It’s social spam.

    AdAge has a nice breakdown. Better than any of my blog posts could have been, so I’ll just hand it over to them.

    There is little data to support so-called influencer behavior in social marketing; rather the data suggests that content and ideas online spread through large numbers of people sharing with small groups.

    The full article is here.


  6. Pinterest!

    There is a great scene in an old Seinfeld episode where Jerry is complaining that his dentist has converted to Judaism, just for access to the jokes. And when asked if this offends him as a Jew, Jerry quickly responds “no, it offends me as a comedian”.

    Pinterest similarly, doesn’t offend me as a user. It offends me as a strategist.

    As Adam Kmiec said in his Digiday talk (and I’m paraphrasing slightly here…), have we all lost our minds?

    Pinterest is growing like a weed, and apparently it also drives more referral traffic than Google+, LinkedIn, and Youtube combined. Which by the way, doesn’t strike me as much of a feat. When you compare a site like Pinterest (whose structure and design is meant to drive traffic) with two networks that are not at all about driving traffic (YouTube and LinkedIn), and one that’s barely off the ground (Google+), it doesn’t seem that impressive.

    But hey, who am I to rain on the parade? We’re just trying to get some twitter clicks here, amirite? READING the article, or god forbid questioning the soundbite is for SUCKAS!

    Moving on…

    So Pinterest is awesome for users. It totally is, and I get that. As soon as I introduced her to Pinterest, my girlfriend was hooked. And she is one of millions that fell into the same level of instant love with the platform.

    However, we digital strategy types are losing our minds. We are losing our minds because we want so badly to weasel our way in there with brand messaging and contests and engagement. We want so badly to crack the code, and figure out how to leverage this platform for our brands. We want to have something new to talk about and sell and be experts on. God damn it, we need it. It’s our lifeblood.

    To this end, and rather unsurprisingly so, smart men and women…good and respected digital strategy types, are being reduced to starry-eyed school girls fawning over the latest pop star. They’re creating pages, haphazardly throwing up images, and wedging “Pin It” buttons next to any piece of website content they have, all while mumbling words like “engagement” and “re-pin”.

    Demographics, user-behaviors, fit with the brand, and general sensibilities be-damned. There is a hot new social network in town, and we’re getting on it. Giddyup.

    Now to be fair, this is not to say that there isn’t fantastic potential for those whose brand align well with the Pinterest freight-train. CustomMade, where I am an advisor has gotten great results from pushing content into the system. And for eCommerce, food, art, and other similar sites/brands, Pinterest can be killer.

    My problem isn’t with Pinterest specifically. My problem is with what Pinterest has revealed to be a rather sad truth; that we’ve become desperate as strategists, and that this desperation has caused us to lose our minds somewhere along the way. We aren’t thinking anymore, we’re just doing. We’re chasing our tails and each other, jumping on whatever pops up in Mashable as the next big thing.

    Sometimes being a good strategist means saying “no” to a new platform if it doesn’t fit your client’s path. But at the very least, being a good strategist always means asking “why?” (and answering), before diving in headlong.

    And lastly, if you don’t believe that it’s a monkey-see, monkey-do world out there in the social space, just remember that this hot new platform called Pinterest, has been around since mid-2010.


  7. Tech Blogging Is Mostly Shit

    Amen. Brilliant post from MG Siegler, former Techcrunch writer. Content Everywhere, But Not A Drop To Drink.

    Some of my favorite tidbits here.

    The problem is systemic. Print circulation is dying and pageviews are all that matter in keeping advertisers happy. This means, whether writers like it or not, there’s an underlying drive for both sensationalism and more — more — more.

    Read the stories that are published in the tech blogosphere tomorrow. Are most published because the writer put in a lot of work or original thought? No, most are published because more — more — more content leads to more — more — more pageviews.

    And…

    Most are stories written with little or no research done. They’re written as quickly as possible. The faster the better. Most are just rehashing information that spread by some other means. But that’s great, it means stories can be written without any burden beyond the writer having to read a little bit and type words fast. Many are written without the writer even having to think.

    And finally…

    Press eat that shit up because they’re easy posts that are pre-packaged and require little thought. And the end result are Tweets/comments/Facebook posts about how “awesome” the story is. Dopamine! Backslaps all around! Everyone happy!

    Well said MG. Beautifully done.


  8. Looking back on social media…50 years from now.


  9. Google Plus….Plus Google

    I was initially bearish on Google Plus. But I’ve spent some time with folks over there recently, and it’s now becoming more clear to me how this will come together for Google in the long-term, and it’s awesome.

    I still maintain that for the time being, Google Plus pages will not likely replace Facebook pages for brands or users. But that’s not the point. Google Plus (meaning those profile pages) are merely a node (and not a hugely important one right now) in a larger system. One that could become even more efficient than it already is.

    It has grown from a free utility, the thing that makes the web useful, into a digital ecosystem of Gmail, Docs, YouTube, Google+ and software that powers smartphones. Now it intends to bring order to this vast and sometimes chaotic network. And though Google argues that the move benefits consumers, it’s clear that it’s also a positive for advertisers.

    More from AdAge here.


  10. "Brands need to be careful in not only what, but how much they curate. There can’t be articles that make the reader question why a brand is sharing it. Also, brands need to make sure they’re not just regurgitating content, but instead offering readers/followers valuable information, as readers will quickly determine the curated content — and thus the brand — is not worth their time"
    Brands Want To Be Content Creators

About me

Boston guy, creative thinker, digital doer. I'm an advisor at Custom Made and Vice President, Digital/Social Strategy at Hill Holliday. Thoughts are my own. More on me here.