Pet Peeve: “Social Media”

Posted by Darren on Dec 28, 2008 • (Comments)

I generally hate buzzwords.  I can stand them for a short period of time, but when they become mainstream they turn into my pet peeve.  Social Media has been a word that we started hearing about a few years ago and now everyone and their mother have turned into social media experts or have even launched social media consultancies.  I can’t tell you how many people I meet at conferences or through this blog who have newly launched social media consultancies, but when talking to them in-depth about their organization, they are nothing more than a glorified PR consultant.  There’s a newly launched group of “social media experts” who band together to provide social media bootcamps for a few grand a day which tell marketing executives to put a few tags on their blog posts, create microchunked video content, and other web marketing tactics.

I was joking on Twitter earlier today and asked how many social media experts were needed to screw in a light bulb and my friend @jonburg answered:

Wikipedia has a fairly comprehensive definition of social media and it compares it to industrial media.

Social media are primarily Internet- and mobile-based tools for sharing and discussing information among human beings.[1] The term most often refers to activities that integrate technology, telecommunications and social interaction, and the construction of words, pictures, videos and audio. This interaction, and the manner in which information is presented, depends on the varied perspectives and “building” of shared meaning among communities, as people share their stories and experiences. Businesses also refer to social media as user-generated content (UGC) or consumer-generated media (CGM).

I argue on all panels and speaking engagements I partake in is that there should be NO dividing line between social media and industrial media.  When you put a line in the middle, you fragment marketing and it does not work as exponentially positive as it can.  It’s sort of like separating out a digital agency from a traditional agency… everything should be together to create bigger integrated idea.

When looking deeper into the term “social media” on job trends, we see that the exact term has been used in job postings quite a bit since September ‘06.  The job chart below was provided by Indeed.

I wanted to add “media planning”, “media strategy” and “viral” into the chart to see what job trends I could find.  What I am fascinated to see is that “social media” surpassed “viral” in job listings (and trends).  Another pet peeve is when clients as me to produce a viral video or create content that will become viral.  We (as strategists) can put all of the necessary technology in place to make media become portable and in such a fashion for people to easily consume it, but we can’t guarantee that anything will become viral as that’s what the consumer does.

Another interesting tidbit is that media strategy (and planning) should contain “social media.”  Recruiters and HR folks are using the latest buzzwords of the moment in their job listings so that’s creating the increase in the chart lines, but everything here should be part of the same job description.

There is burgeoning industry around SMO, or social media optimization.  There are currently 321,000 exact matches in Google for “Social Media Optimization” after searching for it tonight.  Essentially, SMO is similar to SEO, but methods of SMO include adding RSS feeds, social news buttons, blogging, and incorporating third-party community functionalities like images and videos. Social media optimization is related to search engine marketing, but differs in several ways, primarily the focus on driving traffic from sources other than search engines, though improved search ranking is also a benefit of successful SMO. (wikipedia)

The point I’m trying to drive home in this blog post is to include any of this “social media” speak into traditional media strategies.  All media is social and has been social for years.  As long as people have been talking (forever), then any media showcased to them has become social.  Kill the buzzword and focus at the main challenge at hand:  create winning multidimensional media strategies.

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , + Categorized as Advertising & Marketing
  • The old method of advertising is interactive marketing. The term is misleading. Most people think it means that there is some type of interaction on the part of the person advertised to, and there is. But, it is not conversational. Instead, the advertiser wants you to interact with their campaign in a specific set of steps. Following the call to action and visiting a website for instance. It’s the push to make you do something. Live this image. Buy this now.

    Social Media Marketing is just the opposite. It’s the pull of the tribe. The tribe already has your trust so the actions they take are ones you align with. On a larger scale, it’s the allure of belonging in the group as you take action together. “I am doing this so why don’t you do it with me?” On an individual level, the attraction is to behave the same way to get the same results that benefits your fellow tribeswoman or tribesman. “She looks hot! I want to look hot too. I want to go to her hairstylist” and you do. Social Media Marketing uses the power of attraction.

    While advertising tries to use the same tactic, with a billboard for instance, of a gorgeous woman telling you the benefits of the salon, it doesn’t have the same impact because it’s pushing you to go. It is not pulling you in as a trusted friend. Your friends have your best interests at heart and advertisers do not. Social Media Marketing is based on building trust and that foundation will make Social Media a dominant player in Marketing.
  • Knowing the creative buttons to press that make idea's worthy of people actually sharing (or playing) with others needs to be fundamental with most employees of any decent ad agency. That much needs to be wholly integrated into everything everyone does.

    Knowing which technical buttons to press, is something you might want to develop specialists for. I've seen the X's and O's of setting up an idea to be shared, sit in several agency functions (media/ search/ production/pr). This can sometimes be messy as different groups prioritize their tactics differently and power grab on different business's. I'd rather have a conductor prioritize and integrate the social tactics these groups use.

  • What we term 'social media' has to be included as part of the entire business, not just the marketing dept or media strategy.

    But the reason for titles like social media manager, or in my case 'Community Marketing Manager', is that at the moment, there is a need for a focal point to try and coordinate examples, best practice, workshops etc to help to integrate the approach of creating something that gives value to people into the rest of the business.

    Media may have always been social from the point of view of a consumer talking about a product etc, but as a former journalist, I can vouch for the fact that very little of it was made to be social.

    I do love the idea that most business are even blogging, let alone tagging their blogs - we're still a way off that for most companies, certainly in the UK...
  • I'm a day late to this rant but certainly not a dollar short...at least in the value gained in reading it. Well framed. As you know I happen to be a big proponent of providing contextually relevant content to an advertiser but Kenny's example shows how details in the tactical sphere will continue, in the short run, to drive both perception and reality of the divide and subsequent fragmentation you speak of. Yuli speaks gospel when she points out that everyone on Twitter is a self-proclaimed SM Guru. (my personal fav's are the ones who follow thousands and are followed by <25...gurus for sure) The bottom line happens to be your main point: it's all media and the winners will be able to produce an operational successful holistic approach to any campaign.
  • Thank God someone said that. It's been like the elephant in the room (at least in my Twitter room, where every second follower happens to be a "Social Media Expert").

    Being a social media expert these days is pretty similar to being a Hot Dog Eating champion - everyone can eat a hot dog, but no one as well/fast as you do. Still, this doesn't make you a marketing expert on Hot Dogs! You are just an eater, like the rest of humans ;)

    Yuli Ziv
    Social Media Muse
  • Thanks for the shout out! GREAT post!
  • Nice.
    The expertising is exhausting.
    Experts are like veg-a-matics.
    They slice, they dice, they julienne.
    But don't call it a potato because then the expertising loses its value.
    Brand discipline is the thing. Do you have the discipline to carry a brand (the promise, the contract, the conversation, expectation) across all media.
    It's all salesmanship in the end. How good a salesperson are you? Can you pull it off across all venues?

    Oh, and, as an aside, I still liked your original posting of the question better - ...screwing ON the lightbulb. Freudian reference to angels on the head of a pin, mayhaps?
  • "Kill the buzzword and focus at the main challenge at hand"

    Agreed. I actually wrote that section in Wikipedia about "industrial media" (which was mostly the result of some cathartic conversations with other PR geeks and included research like you have done here...right down to the indeed charts!). That whole article is a disaster, we had a good run of it here:

    http://www.ethanbauley.com/pos...

    As you implied, the core of this conversation needs to be about a) integration and b) communicating to customers, complements, competitors, suppliers, etc. I've gotten a lot of practical clarity from thinking about it academically but at the end of the day...it's academic ;-)

    "Social media" is clunky and useless, so it will probably persist. Now, "social capital" on the other hand...there's utility there...
  • Ethan, you are onto something with social capital -

    thanks for stopping bye
  • Great post, hate the buzzwords as well- but happen to disagree on a few points, specifically the call to stop differentiating social media from standard inventory.

    “I argue on all panels and speaking engagements I partake in is that there should be NO dividing line between social media and industrial media. When you put a line in the middle, you fragment marketing and it does not work as exponentially positive as it can. It’s sort of like separating out a digital agency from a traditional agency… everything should be together to create bigger integrated idea.”

    Fragmentation is not necessarily a bad thing. Truly excelling within your core competency, especially in these economic times, allows you to specialize and offer a significantly better product with more value ad to your customer/consumer. In this case, Social Media vs. other types of online media.

    There is value in differentiating the type of advertising inventory, especially on the agency level. Social Media does NOT warrant the same advertising premiums that professional or semiprofessional do . You can’t commoditize all inventory as users behave significantly differently in these environments.
    “Social Media”, as Ryan has pointed out, is a different form of content. Bi-lateral communication between the user and the content creator. For the most part, content produced by the user (not an expert) within a given physical platform. Facebook, Flickr, Tumblr, Twitter. Streams of conscious. Images ,videos, quips.
    So many questions / issues that SM needs to solve before that dividing line is displaced.

    Ex: (no particular order)

    -Social media churns pages. In an average session on an SM site, you’re churning ad impressions exponentially quicker than one would in a “traditional” site. Directory, Login, Profile, Photo Album, Picture 1,2, 3.. Next thing you know, you’re on the 4th ad hop, maxxed out the frequency capping on three previous campaigns, and’re on Generic Ad Network #30940 “Punch the Monkey” generic IAB standard 160x600. Oh yeah, you did this in all in a four minute session. You spent an average of 6.1 seconds on each individual page and the call to one of the ad servers never truly came to fruition. The user never even realized that they were attempting to serve you an ad—and the brand / marketer gets very little, if any, value.

    -There is no contextually relevant advertisement to the user. When you’re viewing Darren’s Facebook page and checking out an update on David (my nephew!), there’s a very good chance that you have no interest in buying related products. Just because Darren is a parent doesn’ t mean that the viewer of the page is. I’m not in the market to buy Pampers. I will most likely NEVER click that advertisement.

    -Click and conversation ratio of social media sites. And, when they do “convert”, why are they doing so? If the users isn’t seeking a specific subject matter, product, good / service, are they even susceptible to any potential ad?

    Nevertheless, I wouldn’t be upset if I never heard “social media” again—but definitely see the value in differentiating it from other sources of online media.

    Wow it's late.

    --Ken Herman
  • I'm arguing fragmentation should NOT exist within the media landscape and that social media (or whatever this is called) should be part of the holistic media planning and strategy exercise. The minute it gets removed from this exercise, it loses the power of being integrated holistically into the entire plan.

    I'm not arguing about how the inventory is bought and sold - whether it's Lotame's time tactics or Media6's friend of a friend (thought many people here would argue that this is not social media advertising, it's advertising on social media platforms) - that's merely tactics. The argument here in this position piece is to showcase that social media is part of marketing as a whole and the social media "shops" will be disintermediated potentially down the road.
  • I'm with you on this one Darren. There should definitely NOT be fragmentation within the media landscape, but rather integration (ugh another buzz word--sorry.) Social media should be part of the agencies offerings. If it's not, they're behind and many people know that. If you have to bring in other people that have a specific focus around it, fine. Like what we're doing at Carrot, we're adapting to the needs of our clients and using what we know about social media to just better their business goals. We're not saying that there should be a line drawn down where social media is useful and where it isn't.

    Great post.
  • Darren you just gave me the best Christmas/New Year's present I've ever received from someone I've never met.

    The term "Social Media" drives me up a wall.

    Social - pertaining to, devoted to, or characterized by friendly companionship or relations.
    Media - an intervening agency, means, or instrument by which something is conveyed or accomplished.

    I'm going to steal one of Nate's sentences in his comment above and mangle it a bit:

    I believe "social media" is the transmission of individual thoughts of one to one and many through communication using electronic, print, verbal, and written forms to create VALUE.

    Once people stop playing around with the buzzword and focus on the integration of all media as you state above so eloquently, then we can truly start down the path of creating true and lasting value for ourselves and others.

    Thanks again and I'm bookmarking your blog post here - like - forever.

    Peter

  • Peter, happy holidays and glad I could give you a virtual present.

    Love the VALUE component.

    Lets create it now.
  • I completely agree with the fact that there are a million douche bags claiming social media expertise. However, i will say that the power of social media lies in the fact that it empowers the masses. It allows complete "newbies" (i hate that term) to act and interact like experts.

    So all those folks claiming to be social media experts, they probably aren't however, i can't blame them for taking advantage of the opportunity to create "some" value from the claimed term and make a buck. You don't have to be an expert to charge expert rates...

    So, great rant, some of these folks definitely need to be called out. Like Nate said, these so called gurus, some of them, are really hurting the space...keep doing the right thing spreading the right news, and preachin the truth. Good work man.
  • Ryan, thanks for stopping by. Happy holidays!
  • So true. Great post.

    In an attempt to qualify and quantify, marketers and agencies inevitably remove themselves from the forest, in order to get a better look at the trees, which may be considered a traditional model. However, this–in effect, negates the purpose of social media ( as it is defined today ) and the ability to understand the idiosyncrasies that support it. Marketers are going to find themselves in a vicious circle, if they're not careful.

    As you mentioned; "We (as strategists) can put all of the necessary technology in place to make media become portable and in such a fashion for people to easily consume it, but we can’t guarantee that anything will become viral as that’s what the consumer does." This means the point of penetration is dependent on content first( creative ) while strategy ( context ) supports the relevance of the content second.

    In saying this, I wonder if it's a moral and ethical line that ultimately divides those who understand social media and those that try to sell it.
  • My take is this:

    Yes, most people who use the term "Social Media" are complete morons and probably just learned how to turn on their computer a year ago and are selling snake oil like they're going out of business. (They *are* going out of business, by the way.)

    Dispassionately, though, I believe "social media" is the transmission of media from person to person, rather than from "authoritative" entity to person.

    Therefore, there are real "social media" experts: those who best understand how information traverses human networks. And there are PR experts: those who understand how to feed information up traditional media networks. Just as their are media planners: experts in how *paid* media should be allocated.

    My point: "Social media" is real and specific experts should exist; however, most self-proclaimed "social media gurus" -- including some with prominent names and companies in the space -- are complete whackos and do a huge disservice to everyone involved.

    Great rant, Darren.

    N
  • Many agencies hire people with titles like culturists, human experience gurus, conversationalists, and human insights officers. These folks play the role of understanding humans and their reactions to media exposure and trends in the environment. Just look at CP+B's job page: http://www.cpbgroup.com/ (and click on Employment)

    inn"NYTechmeetup"onate, you are fairly correct in your response, but all of this exists within the traditional agency.
  • its only the leverage that has increased and the ability to do it more independently than before.. good stuff
  • But I'd argue that you could utilize industrial/traditional marketing before too.
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