Fifteen social media observations

by Bill Wren on October 2, 2009

I’ve been meaning to do this for a while. So here goes:

1 - No one cares about your brand.

2 – Given number 1, you need to find something people do care about.

3 - No one cares about your company.

4 - Given number 3, you need to represent your company with a human face which means a style, an interest, a tone and hopefully a name – Bob, Mary, Fred, Susan – along with a last name and, somewhere, what their relationship to your company is (CEO, VP Marketing, janitor, whatever).

5 - Don’t post on Twitter, Facebook or your blog too frequently. And don’t post too infrequently. How do you tell? Have people in your company following you and get their opinions. Better yet, ask the people who are following your Twitter feed, Facebook feed, blog feed. People like being asked their opinion. It gives them a sense of involvement.

6 - It’s not only okay to discuss things in your feeds that are unrelated to your company, products and services, it’s probably a good idea. See numbers 1 and 3.

7 - If you are only posting you are wasting your time.

8 - Given number 7, get off your butt and start following and commenting and forwarding other feeds.

9 - Using social media is cheap only if you consider it in dollar terms.

10 - The cost of social media is time. See numbers 5, 6 and 8.

11 - Some social media campaigns have worked (I’ve heard) but these are usually clever, gimmicky campaigns.

12 - The problem with number 11 is that they wear thin fast and, without something substantive behind them, they die (as do you) on the vine.

13 - Do not trust anyone describing him or herself as a social media expert.

14 - There are no social media experts (see number 13). Everyone is making it up as they go along.

15 - Pontificating grandly is the favourite social media pastime. This post is a very good example.

And there they are. Feel free to add your own in the comments. :-)

  • http://www.socialnetworkinggirls.com/ Brenda Powell

    In response to your #14, Social media in digital form is hardly new, as any real social media expert will tell you. It has been around since the 50′s when hackers used corporate voice mail systems to record messages and then shared a “call-in number” with other phone hackers. Those hackers would then leave messages that the original hacker could respond to in their next “show”. While social media has been around for so long it is constantly evolving, and has evolved from phones to what it is today. However, to not deem someone with immense years of expertise and experience with social media an expert would be the same as not deeming a doctor a medical expert, since the health field is also ever changing (technology, new diseases, new viruses, new pharmaceuticals, etc.).

  • http://www.socialnetworkinggirls.com Brenda Powell

    In response to your #14, Social media in digital form is hardly new, as any real social media expert will tell you. It has been around since the 50′s when hackers used corporate voice mail systems to record messages and then shared a “call-in number” with other phone hackers. Those hackers would then leave messages that the original hacker could respond to in their next “show”. While social media has been around for so long it is constantly evolving, and has evolved from phones to what it is today. However, to not deem someone with immense years of expertise and experience with social media an expert would be the same as not deeming a doctor a medical expert, since the health field is also ever changing (technology, new diseases, new viruses, new pharmaceuticals, etc.).

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