SPEAK FOR YOURSELFWhat's wrong with social media?

SOCIAL MEDIA

Currently assumes two things about clients: nobody knows,

and nobody cares.

2007

• The term social media enters the language to sell the new reality of the Internet: people are now hanging out, you need to be there.

• Old Internet: business needs a website. New Internet: business needs social media.

• So far so great.

NEW COMPUTER MAGIC!

• A business can function without everything else, but no cash flow = no business.

• Here's a great new thing. How do we sell it?

• Marketing is the lowest common denominator sell, the one thing that is most likely to get you an open ear. 

So social media marketing was born.

People used to hang out online before but that was never monetised to this degree.

Maybe because there were never the huge unified platforms but probably also because the THING that everyone knew they should jump on wasn't so easily put in two words.

BUDGET! And with that, new agencies and experts to pitch for it:

• PR who know how to broadcast or ad agencies who know marketing.

• Entrepreneurs who know pitching.

• New experts from an MLM style wave of social media consultancy business training.

SEE THE PROBLEM?None of the people pitching had ever had an online life before.

They couldn't pitch 'be online, connect, help people in your organisation be online and connect to their peers, colleagues and clients to get what they need right from the source'

because they had never done that. 

The only way of being online THEY knew is for profit.

Working with humans

Far too complicated.

Clients need something simple, charts, bright colours, hot numbers and loud pitches.

Decisions were made on the basis of knowing nothing, and the agencies liked it like that.

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April May June July

CONTENT MARKETING?

Now the industry is set up.

Social media has grown a bit old and you can't expand it too much anymore - everyone already has something in place.

The new thing: content marketing.

It's like we've taken three steps back, rather than one forward. 

Where before there was, at least, some agency kinda thinking along the lines of 'engagement in the name of the client', that connection has been removed by one more degree.

Everyone just accepts, as standard, that it will be done for them. And that it will sell.

MARKETINGTreats people as anonymous marks

to be sold to !

regards people as stupid !

short-term, attention-grabbing gimmicks & campaigns

(and boobs)

PEOPLE TALKING TO PEOPLE

• based on credibility

• maybe even respect

• a desire to be helpful? !

SUBSTANCE OVER NOISE.

SOCIAL MEDIA AGENCIES

• aren't really that clever (and you know that.)

• A client will have the brightest minds pitching to them, and then the most junior people that aren't even important enough for the client to meet make stuff up.

• And speak to people on the client's behalf.

• And we all it accept that as entirely normal.

ON A HUMAN SCALEwe can tell the difference.

when you talk to people online, can you tell the difference if it's them or someone they've hired to speak for them?

Even worse, someone who's not close to them, entirely motivated by getting money from you, and generally a bit of an arse?

• It's much the same on a much bigger scale.

• So much of what the organisation also needs is missed. 

• And gets tacked on somewhere else. Community building, knowledge sharing, collaboration, instant messaging.

• Completely disconnected from each other.

The status quo is broken.

We're not just not evolving the model, we're allowing it to devolve into something worse.

We're all trying to fit into it but it just really sucks on every level.

You see the cracks as soon as you know a little bit more about being online than current model is based on (nothing.) 

GROUNDBREAKING.From the study 'Missing the Mark' from THE ECONOMIST GROUP

CHANGE!It starts with YOU.

Know more and care more. Be online. Get good at it. Join in the conversation.

And then push for change wherever you are.

BUT TWITTER IS STUPID!• Yes, it's also full of shouty people and marketers (thanks).

• Most training is based on broadcasting and marketing models and doesn't question preconceived ideas,

• And most opinions are based newspaper stories about celebrities or making fun of it. Or both.

• BUT try using the hashtag at any event and building a network out of people you've been in the same room with.

Having an online presence where you talk about the things you care about is all there is to breaking the concepts that 'social media', 'content marketing' etc are the perfectly scientific holy grail they're presented to be.

The current model is based on people being too busy, too lazy, too mystified by it all to just go ahead and do that little thing and burst the bubble.

OH, AND ALSO

by being online you actually benefit personally

building a reputation and connections based on caring about and being good at what you do

(Just in case you're into that sort of thing.)

THE GOOD CASE STUDY• The Environment Agency.

• Staff have their own accounts.

• Transparent policy.

• Central account functions as curator for content coming from the field (literally).

• They do the thing they do.

SEE THE DIFFERENCE?

• So get yourself some actual knowledge of being online and make better decisions. And then ask for the right sort of training.

• Push the social media providers to do better, to facilitate thinking, learning and connections.

• Support new kinds of agencies that are filled with skill, with creative people who help you develop your own way of being online.

!SUBSTANCE OVER NOISE!

–Anke Holst !

@the_anke @speakfyourself

http://speak-for-yourself.co.uk

“Speak for Yourself.”