A Case Against “Social Media Marketing”

Ok, so I’m not dead against social media marketing or monetisation. Just keeping a weather eye on the whole phenomena and trying to figure out what on earth’s going on.

I’ve been working with some funky (and top secret) Facebook advertising ideas recently, and it got me thinking.

Here are the results…

Social media platforms like twitter and facebook are built by ideological programmers and geeks.(No offence guys)

Their (noble) aim is to help people communicate and make better connections. If they’re good what they do and understand communication theory and the like, their creations start to spread, most of the time.

Then VC’s start sniffing around because of all the attention (traffic & users) the site is getting and guess “there must be money in here somewhere”.

They throw a few million at it along with a few MBA’s and try to “monetize” the damn thing.

By now though, everything is stacked against “monetizing” the site.

Users are heavily conditioned to the existing interface and are highly resistant to Ads or Premium fees. Also, the users’ attention is conditioned to pay attention to the content inside their environment, not ads or other monetization mechanisms that lead them out of it.

Compare this with Google’s way of paying the bills: Adwords (and unfortunately, many people do compare social media sites with Google – but in the wrong context: “if Google can make money from this, so can we!” Wrong, wrong, wrong.)

Google’s Adwords system is nothing short of genius.

It doesn’t interfere with the users’ experience and blends in nicely with the interface. And more importantly, it seamlessly blends with the users expectations to the point where they don’t even notice they’re clicking on a Sponsored Listing.

And here’s the biggest point of difference between Google and the trendy social media sites:

Google users expect (and want) to get off Google and on to a relevant site that scratches their itch as soon as possible.

Social Media users (especially facebook) don’t. They expect to stay within the interface to catch up with friends and the like.

There’s no itch to scratch and any “foreign” web pages are most unwelcome on social media sites.

THAT is why social media marketing is currently an oxymoron – and a tough nut to crack.

I’m not saying it’s impossible, but we’ve gotta think differently to make it pay.

(Any ideas will be gratefully received)

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~George

Who is the great magician that makes the grass green?

“Who’s the great magician that makes the grass green?” Is the roughly how the Zen riddle goes.

The answer, when I first heard it, took me a while to comprehend.

The answer: it’s you interacting with the grass that makes it appear green to you.

You are the great magician.

It’s a transaction of you and the grass interacting, then your mind subjectively processing this interaction to conclude the grass appears green to you.

To quote Lon Milo DuQuette:

“All things we perceive in the cosmos, including ourselves, are aspects of consciousness within the matrix of matter.”

(Note how I said the grass appears green to you, not the grass is green.)

“The grass is green” indicates an absolute belief. An irrefutable argument to the True Believer.

“The grass appears green to me” indicates relative thinking. Maybe it’s green, maybe it’s not. It just appears green to me.

Because of our experiences, education and language, most of us agree that grass does appear to be green. This is our consensus reality tunnel. We all agree on common aspects of perception to help each other get through the day.

But just because we agree doesn’t make it an absolute in the universe. The greenness is still relative to our interaction, and our processing of that interaction with the grass, relative to our position in space time.

Same goes for the rest of the world, not just grass.

Our common agreement on what we perceive – our consensus reality – can trick us into believing all kinds of things. What’s real, what’s true, what’s right and what’s wrong.

It’s useful to remember these are subjective illusions relative to an individual’s reality.

It’s just when groups of people agree on a reality, it appears more “real” to others and can be easier to enter, but harder to leave.

~George

4 Unrelated Life Improvers

It feels rather strange and self indulgent to be talking about things that have improved my life.

Especially when many blogs preach about how to improve your life, but frankly I haven’t got a clue how to do that. It’s hard enough sorting mine out…

Therefore, all I can do is share what seems to be working for me now. If you get anything out of it, that’s great. If not, that’s cool too.

#1 Exercising daily with the dog, and mountain biking.

Before breaking my back in 2005, I loved exercise. Mountain biking (which led to the broken back), surfing, mountaineering, martial arts, swimming and anything else that looked like fun.

Then after fracturing a vertebrae in a particularly nasty accident, exercise faded from my life.

Now, this wasn’t due to physical restrictions. Miraculously 6 months after the accident I got a clean bill of health. It was simply a case of multiple factors conspiring against staying fit.

It crept and I didn’t notice it at first.

Things like leaving the physically demanding heating trade and working from a desk all day for the first time worked against staying active.

And if you’re anything like me, your great plans to join the gym/go running/start yoga etc never materialise.

I stayed sedentary and overweight until last September when I got a dog, and was pretty much forced into exercising daily. Once the habit was established, the walks gradually got further and faster each time.

I’m now at the point of walking 3-4 miles a day and mountain biking once or twice a week. Going by my 2005 standards, it’s nothing, but it’s a massive improvement compared to where I was.

It seems to be working too… I’ve got more energy and lost about 21 pounds.

#2 Multivitamins

The jury’s out on this one… I appear to have a more energy and need less sleep, but is that due to the weight loss and improving fitness? Not sure.

I’m accuately aware of the placebo effect, so will withhold judgement for now. Suffice to say, they seem to be doing something positive.

#3 Basecamp Software

Multivitamins to Software? Yeah. It’s quite a leap.

If you’re involved in running projects of any kind, Basecamp is such a great help. For me (being naturally disorganised) it’s reduced my stress levels immensely.

All my client projects are wrapped up with their own to do lists, messages, files, and deadlines. Gone are the post-it notes, one master to-do list, too many email folders, and that horrible recurring “what have I forgotten?” thought at night.

I thoroughly recommend it. www.bascamphq.com

#4 Questioning Authority and Thinking for Myself.

I kept this one for last because it’s a biggie.

In fact, to talk about it in as much detail as I’d like would take up a very long post indeed.

It would also involve me expressing this new way of thinking in a way I’m not yet capable of – robbing it of its impact.

For now though I’ll say no more and leave you with my favourite Timothy Leary quote to chew on.

“Question Authority. Think for Yourself.”

Until next time…

Adwords Phishing Scam

This is important and could save you a big headache…

I was doing competition & market research on Google and found this little ad when I searched for “adwords”:

Click to enlarge

It looks like an Ad to grab people making navigational searches to access their Adwords accounts.

When you click on it (which I DO NOT recommend – the site may install sneaky malware), you’re taken to this page:

Click to enlarge

Which to the casual observer is the Adwords home page.

It’s not.

The actual page is “adwordsgooglen.com”, not the official Google Adwords site.

Now, I don’t want to make unfounded accusations here, but this site looks, sounds and smells like a phishing site.

In fact it stinks of “phish”.

I’m guessing its purpose is to fool unsuspecting visitors into giving away their Adwords login details to unscrupulous individuals.

• I suggest you’re very careful when you navigate to your Adwords account. Here are a couple of tips:
• Type the Adwords URL directly into your browser: http://adwords.google.com.

If you must do navigational searches to access your Adwords account, check the domain name is adwords.google.com (or your local equivalent: such as adwords.google.co.uk).

Right. I’m off to report this to Google. Who’s with me?

Cheers,

George

5 Minute Analysis of Facebook Groups

A  client sent me an email about how to get exposure using Facebook.

This particular cause is non-profit, so Facebook PPC was out of the question, which got me thinking about what makes a Facebook group spread.

I’ve been pushed for time recently so I took less than 5 minutes to see if I could find some common themes in the popular “main stream” memes.

Here’s the super quick analysis of what seems to make a group spread (names, markets/causes have been removed to protect the guilty):

Hi XXX,

The cheapest and easiest way to do it is create a Facebook group.

Give the group a name that has a strong emotional benefit. EG: “Support XXX’s Innocent Victims” or “Support The XXX Casualties” — Think The Sun newspaper headlines.

Facebook group tend to spread better with these elements:

• Strong emotive “storyline” including…
• Implied or explicit victims. Or group/individual who needs help.
• A common enemy to blame. (“Us vs Them”)
• Solution must involve spreading the message while affecting the members social status in a positive way. (Think significance & contribution as primary drivers.)

I may be a cynic, but some very viral Facebook groups seem like a combination of a Tabloid call to arms/witch hunt and a chain letter. Not saying this is good or bad, but it appears to work!

Cheers,

George

This is, of course, mostly speculation on my part.

I haven’t created a Facebook group with the specific intention of simply getting members through whatever means necessary. This means I could be completely wrong (certainly wouldn’t be the first time).

So what do you think? What’s your experience of viral Facebook groups? Is my cynicism justified?

Would love to get your thoughts.

Until next time…

George.