When I Read new SoMe Tactics or News on Websites I feel like Bill Murray in Groundhog’s Day

My blog post since January probably gave you the impression that I am over social media ‘experts’ making sweeping claims and reporting on seemingly obvious ‘findings’. Like any marketing tactic, social media require common sense. Any level of common sense went out the window when I read a ‘report’ on Mashable today:

Only About a Third of Tweets Are Worth Reading [STUDY]

I am sorry to single out Mashable on this, but so many people are guilty of posting really trivial articles and sensationalizing them. Really, people don’t care about most tweets? Go figure. Most people don’t care about what the majority of people say, and the stuff people do care about they listen to. Twitter is no different than real life interaction insofar as ‘caring’ is concerned. You won’t care about Tweets if you follow the wrong people.

Twitter is 100% situational. A friend of mine who uses Twitter to stay in touch with friends wouldn’t care about all the marketing Tweets I read daily. Something being ‘worth reading’ is an entirely subjective concept, trying to add hard data to something with so many variables is simply a waste of time.

‘But Justin, now we have HARD data that only 1/3 of tweets are worth reading’

Great, now we can stick a number to a concept that has been understood since Twitter launched. With over 200 million tweets being published a day, it is no wonder that people don’t care about the majority of them. Remember, marketing is common sense and social media marketing is a subset of marketing.

In Groundhog’s Day, Bill Murray didn’t only have to come to terms with the banality of the film’s portrayal of Punxsutawney, but he had to deal with seeing the same thing day in an day out. This brings me to my next major issue with the content creation & syndication by ‘Social Media Experts’:

All of the tips you are giving, people have read elsewhere and you are merely repeating them!

Instead of being a parrot, be a critical thinker. If you have been saying something like ‘Engaging your users is the only way to have an impact on Social Media’, why don’t you do the following:

1. Give examples of campaigns that have used engagement to build a social network
2. Identify the trends
3. Report on the trends with facts and data

Also, make sure to constantly question whether ‘engagement’ is actually a best practice. No matter how central a concept is to your efforts or who wide spread it has been adopted, it is always good to analyze it. Marketing has changed so much in the past few years and will continue to change rapidly. So always have a shred of doubt in your methodology, it will help you be more successful.

I guess to  close this rant, I would like to say the following:

Instead of publishing reports that simply don’t matter or repeating the same old tips, add value, critique and context to your content. The only way to be successful as a marketer is to grab the attention of the public, if you are spitting out the same old banalities people will go from reading your article and saying ‘Who Cares?’ to never reading your articles again.

Comment please!

/rant