Social Media – A Dead Duck??
| Posted in Uncategorized | Posted on 07-07-2010
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Social media seems to on the tip of every marketers’ tongue at the moment; but what are the real benefits to social media, and is it something that we should all be doing?
Well, my English teacher always told me write about what you know, and I know that I am an avid facebook user, I don’t twitter, I have no idea why people do that? Sure it’s fun to see what Stephen Fry had for breakfast, but in all honesty I couldn’t care one iota that:
Jazzys@t76: just bought a loaf of bread to feed to the ducks
Or
Toplady43: can’t wait for lunch with the girlies later
So, I can’t really comment on whether or not twitter is going to enhance your business presence, (although I won’t be reading it, but then I’m probably not your target market anyway, so no loss there!)
Let’s have a think about facebook though, something I use on an almost daily basis, I don’t really know why, it’s become somewhat of an obsession to make sure I know exactly what all of my friends are up to at any one point. I can stare in awe at pictures from a “crazy night out” or perhaps some new photos of another of my friends who has gone travelling. There’s Jimbo on a beach in Bali, he’ll be finding himself no doubt. Sometimes if I’m really lucky I will get invited to a party, BBQ or perhaps a day’s paintballing, which sounds great. I shall tick “attending”. And “oh look!” I have been tagged in some photos of that night out in Guildford, don’t I look stupid? How amusing.
By this point I have probably wasted about 25 minutes of my life and I am losing interest, but at no point have I interacted with any sort of work related material. It has all been “social” interaction. Perhaps that’s why they call it Social Media….hmmmm
So having a look through my facebook page I can find only two corporations that I am a fan of, or have interacted with in anyway. I tell a lie, it’s three. One is Red bull, the other is national geographic, and the third is CommuniGator. Red bull is always putting on interesting events and crazy stunts, with great videos that I want to watch and can’t get elsewhere, and national geographic; just the most amazing photos and articles on world travel and culture, and CommuniGator…..well I work for them!!!!
I think the point I am trying to make (and let’s not forget that it is one man’s opinion), when I am interacting with facebook or any form of social media, it is because I want to interact with my friends, or engage with my own interests. I don’t want to be bothered with updates and quotes from work related stuff, in all honesty I find having a blackberry fairly intrusive and I’m sure that there are others who have felt like launching theirs from the nearest bridge, but that’s the way we work now, so….., sorry it just rang. How intrusive!! Social media, to me, seems to me to be another step towards pushing work life into our spare time. I don’t want it there, I want to occupy myself with something else and forget about work sometimes. I think social media certainly has a place to play in certain industries, such as Red Bull or maybe a night club or restaurant chain, as these are companies selling or promoting products that are “sociable”. For the rest of us though I think we should realise that people are not interested in engaging in their work life 100% of the time, and that social media needs to be left for the few!
So to conclude, yes I think social media is a dead duck, let’s get the fad out of our system and start working on promoting our companies in a professional manner that can return tangible results and core metrics that we can use to deliver proper content to our readership in a manner and time frame that they can interact with…..let’s get email marketing!!
Oh and save your discussion as to where your facebook logo is going to go on the website, I won’t be becoming a fan.
Alastair Lovell.


