I’m getting sick of social media for the sake of social media
Posted in Miscellaneous, Social Media
It's now a cliche
It’s everywhere. Everyone has “trendy” icons plastered all over email/web marketing materials lately. “Find us on Facebook”, “Follow us on Twitter” or a “View me on LinkedIn”. It’s at the stage where it’s become noise.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have an issue with people and companies “trying to connect with their audiences” but it’s pretty obvious a lot of it is done because they think they should or because someone else is doing it.
With so much media attention on Twitter lately, management types who likely don’t understand what’s happening will put the pressure on underlings to “setup a twooter” or perhaps make a “bookface fan page”. If everyone else is doing it, we HAVE to do it to stay competitive. Perhaps not a good philosophy.
The best example of it I’ve seen is with the ATO (Australian government tax organisation – same as the IRD or IRS). You can become a fan of completing a tax return using their e-tax software. Exciting stuff, people everywhere want to be a fan of tax returns.
Last time I saw it had 550 fans. In the scale of things, with 20+ million people in Australia and let’s say 10 million of those completing tax returns, it’s nothing. Why bother?
So what do I think you should do?
Evaluate if it’s going to really going to make a difference. Then make sure you’re going to follow through with it, so many people (including myself) might start something and not continue.
If you don’t understand what it is – try getting into something like Twitter on a personal level. Understand the dynamics of the twitter community so you can figure out how to leverage it for your company.
I haven’t followed through with Twitter myself, but notice I don’t promote my Twitter account?