How not to do Social Media - the RT This! Lady

Like I'm an expert at it. But there are some things that just prickle, and this is one of them. I'd like to think that I'm pretty inoffensive and mild, which is possibly untrue, but I would prefer a live and let live existence to a confrontation and bad blood.  At the risk of being called out as mean-spirited or cowardly then, this is what is under my skin with this.

A while back I stumbled upon a particular and peculiar twitter user that caught my eye for the appalling way they 'do' Social Media Marketing. She's the RT This!! lady

Just about every tweet ends with the missing "RT This!!!" or similar, sometimes a "please" sometimes not. You have to click to belive it

These are people who market themselves as "the experts" in Social Media Marketing, they have this tandem account they use for that and it makes me frown with angst about who is overseeing this nonsense.

Well no-one since it's their own company and they are the directors, but I mean to which body are they responsible to? It's all well and dandy to know how to fiddle Google into a page ranking, and know the tricks of SEO / SEA and LSO but that doesn't make you a viable company, or an expert in the nuance of Social Interaction for sales purposes. And the website has many what I would call unsubstantiated claims about the effectiveness or comparable value they offer.

I'm not so flash on Grammar and spelling but it's cringingly bad when you're opening sentences uses "gotta"- twice

"“WHERE SHOULD YOU START?”, it can be daunting, you’ve gotta learn this and you’ve gotta learn that, whats the best direction to take?, well, we are the best direction to take, we know business owners are busy so we can take the hard work out of building a true and visible online presence for your business"

and this gem

"websites and all of your Social Media Marketing accounts, set them up, get them working for you and then hand you the reigns when you’re ready" (they mean, I think reins)

and this

"Sales all over the world, Alaska, Canada, USA, Japan, Australia, Columbia, Niue, to name a few" so State of America, Country, America all over, country, country, State of America, country" and then they mention Florida too!

It's just staggeringly bad, and I wish I had the balls to send them a message to tell them just how bad I think it is. But I'll be a coward and just blog my disdain. After all they are the people with their "finger on the pulse of Social Media Marketing" and perhaps it's me that doesn't get it.

I hope it isn't.

In the court of public opinion - #1

In the case of a 16yo in Turangi A particularly tasteless sex crime against a girl 5.

Thankfully public opinion and sentiment isn't the deciding factor in what if any punishments are due. There isn't much doubt about guilt, the teen, by all accounts, turned himself in, and is in custody, bail declined, for the duration.  The story will be one of why, and how. And we will all have an opinion on that.

But is you've been unfortunate enough to read some blogs then you'll find things like this, all anonymous all ignorant and all rabid;

• "Hopefully this scumbag will be jailed. He will last about 5 seconds in prison."


• "He should be fucking shot"


• "he big pity is ... the cunt is only 16 and  will create a feeding frenzy for lawyers, psychiatrist and the like all at our expence, besides that in jail nowadays most of the crims are in for similar shit, they will just fuck him."


• "16. Disgusting. And of course will likely not be convicted due to his age. Appalling."


• "I REALLY hope that the judge refuses name suppression in this case."


• "It's well past time minors got automatic name suppression. Hang em high"


• ime for a little social justice me thinks....Should get a lynch mob together outside Taupo youth court for a public castration and flogging. What a piece of trash cant wait till his lawyer (probably tax payer provided) blames his tragic upbringing."

And that's just from just one blog!

Twitter had is share of agony aunts and uncles, with one long and ill-informed back and forth about nature over nurture that I was (As was the whole of connected twitter) watching (or participating in).

Bottom line is not a one of us knows, and not a one of us will get to decide on this. The worst thing about this whole episode, in my opinion, is the level of faux outrage that  people have. The crime was sick and distasteful, all crimes against children are, but with a little nudge from the media and we have a circus born. And to the circus come the freaks, freaks with opinions, bloated, self-important or ill-informed, all there at one outlet or another.

This is the price we pay for democracy on the internet of course, we're all allowed our say and we're all at liberty to share it with who ever we like, where we like, and how we like.

Casting aside even our own sense of moral right and climbing on the high horse of public outrage doesn't end well. We're increasingly like a school of  sharks who encircle the next victim with a savage onslaught, only to move away quietly to the next victim, out faux outrage dissipated.

We've had this Faux Outrage at events such as, Pike river, Michael Laws, Garth George, The Tea Cup fiasco,  the Rena accident, and just about any time there is a child abuse case spread across the media.

It's ok to be disgusted, and to be confused by events that you don't have any control over, really it is, however it's not ok to assume that you are the arbiter of outcomes. It just doesn't work that way.

just saying.

In an instant...

Way back when, before the internet and mobile phones we'd agree to meet somewhere and we did. The newspapers arrived with the news from far-flung places, with the best bits held for the Sunday papers. Junk mail didn't exist. There were weekly local newspapers. We all watched either the news at 5:45, 9pm or 10pm or all three. There was no 24 hour TV.

Fast forward a bit. Now we have everything in an instant."Social Media". For instance  we have Twitter, which is about as real-time as it gets without being there, sometimes it's accurate, sometimes not. If you've ever witnessed the rise and decline of a twitter meme you'll understand how fickle it is.

And we have deal-a-day websites, by the hundreds, imploring us to buy now, immediately, things we don't need at prices we can't ignore. We have deal a day advertising on twitter of course, and Facebook.

We can't just agree to meet somewhere, we have to text and call numerous times 'just in case' It's scary how frail we've become, how unsure it all is, how needy.

Facebook has given everyone access to our lives, out thoughts and deeds. And we accept it. FourSquare has given you the ability to let people know what cafe, shop, street, bar you are in all the time. It's "me" central!

But it can't carry on. This explosion of socializing on the internet is doomed at some point, where it becomes intrusive. And I mean intrusive to me - I don't really care that you're the mayor of the donut shop, I don't really want to see your party pictures on Facebook. There are bits of your life that I am interested in, just not some bits.

Twitter, Text, Facebook, et al, is where the wild west is. "Everyone" is trying to get a piece of the action, to make a buck, and to get you to spend a buck. At some point you just have to switch off and tune out.

Now I can't actually think of a service that I've used that has fallen into obscurity, other than the web hosting Geocities, other than that Bebo, and MySpace perhaps. So I can't see a tailspin for any of the services we use right now, or are familiar with, which are, to repeat them, Twitter, Facebook, FourSquare, and Youtube. Even an aggregation of all these things into one super app isn't what is going to happen, because why? It'll be too cumbersome, too awkward, too heavy.

The thing that we overlook  with Twitter, Facebook, FourSquare, Youtube. Google+, Flikr, Wordpress, LinkedIn et al is that they are all "free" That's right we don't need to part with any cash of any kind to use them. Sure we have to have a device that can access them interactively, but they are free to use. And we accept that without question that we're giving up something for something. We just don't seem to care about what it is we're giving up, which in two words is privacy and ownership. Of our identity and our intellectual property.

Anything that rises will have to have some basics, speed, reach, ease and appeal. Anything that falls will have become bloated, tedious or have some cataclysm around it like bankruptcy, where users fall away like hair falling out never to return.

Foursquare, now there's a thing, I became the Mayor!

I was Foursquare Mayor of my house, the street I live in, the street I drive down to get into my street, the bit of the motorway I get stuck on in the morning, a few local businesses and one or two places I shopped at, and quite a few that I didn't. I was mayor of a couple of shopping malls.

I was at one point Mayor of the place I worked and of three of our competitor companies. I became mayor of a car park, and a playground. I was mayor of the 3 different versions of the hockey stadium.

I think I had 17 mayoralties all going for me at one point. Clearly I'd missed the point.

And you know what the useless thing about foursquare was? That someone could take my mayoralty from me, and being ever so slightly OCD that's not going to work out for me. Or them, because then it became a staking game where all I would do it redouble my efforts to become mayor again, and rob them of "Mayor of playground" title that I so covet!

Never mind that it has a business application, I'm sure that some companies have fantastic offers and incentives to check-in to their establishment, a loyalty card scheme, I was mayor of 17 places, all for my own ego.

And you can only be mayor or wannabe mayor. You can't be a councillor or assistant to the mayor, it's all or nothing. You can earn "badges" for various things, these are but trivia compared to be being Mayor.

They had a mayor only party at skycity one time. You could only get in if you were mayor of somewhere, how whacked is that? Do they still have that every month? Don't know never went, never was going to, and couldn't understand why I would.

So I stopped using it, since it appears to be a solution that has no problem, a pissing competition for the OCD, and a terribly gauche way of showing off your coffee habit.

Keeping it a secret - part 2

The 'corporate' me is involved with a Social Media initiative at work, which I've variously described as either being "leading edge" or "mad", because we seem to be the only organisation of our type attempting to forge a new path, making us visionary or delusional.

It is a fantastic journey, and there are lots of affirmations along they way, but mostly it's a circle of "experts" all citing each other, all citing the same success story, with little concrete "how to" advice. There are some exceptions and I would suggest you read the "Tweet this book" http://tweetthisbook.posterous.com/

So we have Twitter, we have a Squarespace 'blog' page to land to, and a LinkedIn group. We're not so keen on FB.

Two or Three  things

 The direction is somewhat herky jerky and random
The resource is limited and what we have pointed at it isn't savvy about the content need, and
To be honest I'm not sure the 'real' me wants to be associated with some of the content.

By the last remark I mean I don't want to have to paint myself into a corner where you can define me. I don't want to be known as the guy who linked to a lot of fluff pieces about products. And if I change my job I don't want to have to undo all that I have done if I have to.

And all of  that makes me a little uneasy about the 'corporate me' and the results we can get, and for the business we are in (which is distribution).

I'm sure we're not delusional and eventually the others will follow us, what I should be doing is making capital about the effort I've put in and getting myself some more money for it. That's the big secret.

Keeping it a secret

I realised something. The twitter me, and this the ranting rambling no-mates blog me, aren't that comfortable that my real live friends could read it.

It's bad enough having a boss that's on twitter, and workmates on FaceBook.

What do I have to hide? Well I'm not sure, perhaps the real me, the insecure me? Or perhaps the frivolous me, the unfunny me, the me that is just me to me.

I can't imagine any of my colleagues reading this, I can't imagine them reading. I can't imagine them twittering, although a couple of them do have accounts, they are passive observers.

I'm down with that. There is far to much 'me' in the twitterverse and a lot of me in here. I've bagged a few people cryptically and openly on both.

Am I afraid that I'd end with no mates? I'm not that sure I have more than a handful anyway.

Truthing on Twitter

One of my followers is also my boss. This is problematic of course because there are days when all I want to say is how much of a doofus he is. 'cept that he will read it and then it could go badly.

There are peeps I follow that seem to be angry all the time, and it's like a stream of bad-tempered bursts of 140 character railing against the world, everything, men, pets, makes me annoyed because among them there are people I know, and like, in an internetty kind of way.

How important is the number of followers, what vanity is it to outwardly say that all you want really is x number of followers. We can all get those. But it must be quality rather than quantity. Do you think that your whole follower list actually reads your 140 character bursts ? What all of them ? Get on with you .

I could of course address my angst by making yet another twitter account- one which I can be anonymous in, but anonymity is not my strong thing. I'm a serial user of my own name as user-name and blogname places.

And Twitter- is it for marketing or presence ? Who are all these "experts" who actually don't tell you anything or impart knowledge but pass the story from person to person like a parcel of truth. Am I having a pop at SM experts now? I guess I am.

Which leads me to the other bit. Of course I look after an account that is our corporate presence. 'cept my boss thinks that he needs to follows x number of social media experts on our follow list, wherein I go and unfollow most of them as not appropriate. I've got away with it so far.

Social media then, tricky on the field as well as off it. I'll get he hang of it one day.

Truthing on Twitter

One of my followers is also my boss. This is problematic of course because there are days when all I want to say is how much of a doofus he is. 'cept that he will read it and then it could go badly.

There are peeps I follow that appear to be angry all the time, and it's like a stream of bad-tempered bursts of 140 character railing against the world, everything, men, pets, makes me annoyed because amongst them there are people I know, and like, in an internetty kind of way.

How important is the number of followers, what vanity is it to outwardly say that all you want really is x number of followers. We can all get those. But it must be quality rather than quantity. Do you think that your whole follower list actually reads your 140 character bursts ? What all of them ? Get on with you .

I could of course address my angst by making yet another twitter account- one which I can be anonymous in, but anonymity is not my strong thing. I'm a serial user of my own name as user-name and blogname places.

And Twitter- is it for marketing or presence ? Who are all these "experts" who actually don't tell you anything or impart knowledge but pass the story from person to person like a parcel of truth. Am I having a pop at SM experts now? I guess I am.

Which leads me to the other bit. Of course I look after an account that is our corporate presence. 'cept my boss thinks that he needs to follows x number of social media experts on our follow list, wherein I go and unfollow most of them as not appropriate. I've got away with it so far.

Social media then, tricky on the field as well as off it. I'll get he hang of it one day.

Social Media - Only for the masses

I'm lucky to have a  Manager that is keen on Social Media, and allows me some leeway in discovering and investigating the whole Social Media construct.

The corporate 'We' - have a Twitter Account, a Face-Book presence and a Blog Page at Square-Space, and a LinkedIn group.

What I'm coming to realise is, is that this stuff is ok, but it really is useful if you are in a business or service that is frequented by the end-user type. That is to say it's not useful for a distributor company,  such as the one I work for, that is in essence representing brands that already have their own Social Media presence.

For example? Air NZ and the Air Points Fairy is held to be one of the big NZ success stories. How would this go, or would be as successful  if it was a service being offered by say Flight Shop (just to name a name).

Telecom and Vodafone and Microsoft have a twitter presence in NZ too.

I've yet to see a success story, or a way to be successful story, for a company such as the one I work for.

Sure we can become a twitter presence and present information as it comes to hand to the market- but garnering followers for information that may already be available from the source appears to be the the missing bit that no one can offer up a solution for.

Many twitter"experts" are quick to offer the same pithy advice on twittering, that is you have to be in to win, listen and interact. What they fail to tell you is how to connect to the audience, especially if you are not the company directly responsible for the product being commented on.

Sure twitter is good and closing down or interacting with complaints/complainers, but given that we have interactive (real people) contact with those likely to complain then our twitter presence appears to be just lip service, for us anyway.

Recently out Australian parent company ran a daily twitter based comp, that frankly had #fail all over it. Basically because the "build it and they will come" ethos does not apply, or did not materialise.

Very generalised I know, I bet dollars to cents that there are niche distributor type business to business companies that are successful - these I would pick though are seen as brands in their own right, and not being representatives for the goods or service they offer.

What I am saying is that Business-to-Business type Social Media is a different game to the Business-to-End User customer one. And I can't find a play book for the B2B model.

Social Media - Only for the masses

I'm lucky to have a  Manager that is keen on Social Media, and allows me some leeway in discovering and investigating the whole Social Media construct.

We - as a company - have a Twitter Account, a Face-Book presence and a Blog Page at Square-Space.

What I'm coming to realise is, is that this stuff is ok, but it really is useful if you are in a business or service that is frequented by the end-user type. That is to say it's not useful for a distributor company,  such as the one I work for, that is in essence representing brands that already have their own Social Media presence.

For example? Air NZ and the Air Points Fairy is held to be one of the big NZ success stories. How would this go, or would be as successful  if it was a service being offered by say Flight Shop (just to name a name).

Telecom and Vodafone and Microsoft have a twitter presence in NZ too.

I've yet to see a success story, or a way to be successful story, for a company such as the one I work for.

Sure we can become a twitter presence and present information as it comes to hand to the market- but garnering followers for information that may already be available from the source appears to be the the missing bit that no one can offer up a solution for.

Many twitter"experts" are quick to offer the same pithy advice on twittering, that is you have to be in to win, listen and interact. What they fail to tell you is how to connect to the audience, especially if you are not the company directly responsible for the product being commented on.

Sure twitter is good and closing down or interacting with complaints/complainers, but given that we have interactive (real people) contact with those likely to complain then our twitter presence appears to be just lip service, for us anyway.

Recently out Australian parent company ran a daily twitter based comp, that frankly had #fail all over it. Basically because the "build it and they will come" ethos does not apply, or did not materialise.

Very generalised I know, I bet dollars to cents that there are niche distributor type business to business companies that are successful - these I would pick though are seen as brands in their own right, and not being representatives for the goods or service they offer.

What I am saying is that Business-to-Business type Social Media is a different game to the Business-to-End User customer one. And I can't find a play book for the B2B model.

Twitter in the workplace Pt3

In where we discover that all you need is time.

One of the things not mentioned in all the literature is how much time you need to build a following, how you really attract followers and when you can expect to get some traction

I believe that my organization in NZ is leading the way in adopting Social Networking in the workplace but it really is not clear just how long you need to make a mark. Sure following the leaders is one way to get news. Re-Tweeting may make your tweet count rise, but it seems to be to be likely that the same people following you are following them? I could be wrong.

Tweedeck can be a distraction, and you can end up absorbed in the twitterings about Cisco, for instance, who could be a person/Dog/Fish/Bar or nick-name – there is a lot a chafe with the wheat. So you have to begin to pick your keyword followings.
And there are things like #tags (hash-tags) to get a grips with, like keywords they can attract people to your followers list.

There are also a number of measurement services all starting with some variation on “tweet” that are 3rd party offerings that are available to use, mostly if not always free of charge.

And so then that brings us to our second step, we’re already tweeting our normal information to the twitterverse, and our next step in the social media project is to expand our usefulness. How we do this is to blog. And to blog you need content. And to get content you either have to be an expert in your field, have great opinions about a wide range of subjects, be good at research and be able to translate that into an article, or get someone to provide you the words you need.
We’re going to have a mix and match of in-house submissions and donated words.

That’s the plan anyway.