The Church of Social Media
Written by Robert Bacal | 
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| Bunk, Lies and Hype - Bad Advice |
Oh, that IS funny. I've long been saying that what is driving business use of social media is a combination of "hype and hope", plus the somewhat irrational (not supported by data, evidence, logic) belief or faith that social media works. In short, it's a religion, a movement based on faith, not generalizable results.
So, I saw reference to a blog post entitled Converting the Disengaged to the Church of Social Media by David Ryan. It has this great picture of a bible with a usb port, which is actually far better than the article content, but oh that title. Inadvertently David hit this right on the head. It's about converting and it's about faith, and it's about Church, and the only thing he left out is that it's about bulls***.
Pity. But it IS funny. Take a look at it if you have a moment.
Here's my comment on the blog:
This post inadvertently hit the nail on the head by virtue of the reference to the Church of Social Media. That is it exactly. Those IN the church do so on the basis of faith and belief, not facts and data, and describe those outside of the church as people who do not "get it, the one true way".
That's typical of religions, we know, you don't, and I'll tell you it's all both insulting and wrong. The reason many reject social media as business tool is that the data to support it over other alternatives is either very poor, misinterpreted, or completely absent, and if you actually look for them, you will find thousands of businesses who have tried social media, failed at it and quietly left. Nobody talks about those.
That's not to say that social media is useless. It has uses, but not even close to what the reverends contend. That will become evident in the next few years. It's based on hype and hope just the way it was in the 90′s for the web in general. By and large the claims and hopes were bogus then, as were the business models,and thousands of people suffered as a result.
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Go Where The Customers Are? NOT
MicroThoughts
As a business you have to choose where to put your efforts on social media so there is a fit between the needs and mindset of your potential customers, and what you have to offer how you offer it and when yo offer it. If you don't you become an annoyance — social media spam.Mashable no-no
In response to a Mashable article about how Starbucks supposedly used social media to bring one million people into their stores in a day:
This is just terrible "journalism". First, the giveaways brought the people in. Second, we have no idea how many people came for the freebies hearing on it from Twitter or not. Third, They could have pulled people into their stores with this promotion in any of a number of ways. This is not a social media success, anymore than having sandwich board guys outside of each store would constitute a success for loitering.
Quote:
If you get the bulk of your information ABOUT social media THROUGH social media, your conclusions and understanding of it are going to be biased and quite out of whack.
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The psychological need or desire to be heard is so powerful that we are willing to pretend that our tweets and status updates are being attended to, read, and thought about, even when it's clear that almost nobody is paying much attention. That's why people actually continue to talk about the trivialities in their lives even if nobody ever responds. That's one strong need!!
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