Two old expressions come to mind when I think of the Internet and social media. They are, 1) “Any publicity is good publicity,” and, 2) “Location, location, location.”
With the first about publicity, I can’t help thinking the guys at Toyota might have a thing or two to say about that. It simply isn’t true that any publicity is good. Some hurts. A lot. As to the second about location, there is truth in that. It explains why so many companies are flocking to social media. You need to be where consumers are if you want to sell.
But location is meaningless if you don’t know who the people are, why they are where they are or if you don’t know what to do once you’re in the location. You can go to the busiest intersection in your city and drop your pants. You’ll get lots of attention. What then? You’ve been noticed but not in a good way. And even if you hadn’t dropped your pants, if you had done something less silly, more mature to garner attention, what then? What do you do with the attention?
This is what I keep wondering as I see contests and videos and who knows what else on the various social media as companies try to get attention – followers and fans. How seriously would we follow or be a fan of a corn chip?
If gimmicks are the extent of what you are doing, if your product or service is what you are hoping people will gather around and make some kind of commitment to, you really don’t understand social media or people.
We’re obviously in a world obsessed with diversions. Seth Godin has a great post about this today. You can get our attention. You can even hold it, though usually only briefly. But it is people we are interested in and it is people we keep returning for. For all its gimmicks, diversions and “neat stuff,” all our technology is only a passing interest. It only holds us when it allows us to connect and interact with each other.
Why are so many people using social media? Because so many other people are. People want to be with other people. It’s that simple.
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