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May 29, 2014    Industry Intrigue

Breaking the ‘Social Media’ Habit

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I hate social media. I hate it being this depressing catchall for anything and everything that would have never cut it before–meaning I wouldn’t dare pitch “Throwback Thursday” to any of my previous bosses because it would be that stupid. I hate social media for all the posts where posers get to be bigger posers (think diamond rings = #blessed, so proud of wife’s promotion = #blessed, 800 kid photos where I can’t even see your kid = #blessed). I hate it for being the only form of ‘communication’ I even have with some people. I hate it for making me feel like a poser.

As a business owner who had to bootstrap her own company, I love social media as a conduit for messaging I want to get across. It challenges us to be in the 1% of campaigns that actually gets conversions. It’s actually harder to run a social media campaign than to buy a $30K billboard at the “perfect” location with the “jillions of eyeballs” that will see it. It’s harder to do b/c it’s all in how you mine the data to target the ads do–something traditional spend doesn’t address.

“B2B companies should post more in the morning” does not count as strategy. Zuckerberg already killed any of that with Facebook’s new policies. Seeing time wasted just because ‘Everyone’s doing it’ is one of my major feral animal peeves, it’s beyond pets at this point.

If your Instagram doesn’t have a plan, all the filters in the world aren’t going to help matters. And seriously, does your business really need one? Or is it just something brands think they need to just have ‘because everyone else does’.

There’s no client mold at Rock Candy Media. I don’t just bring up web presence in a meeting and immediately churn out a Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Instagram, Pinterest combo just because they’re ubiquitous entities. We actually work off traditional marketing plans in order to even think about the nontraditional campaigns we’re known for. We have to get better results than the big businesses who have trillions to spend in advertising (unlike some of our clients–they deserve a voice and small businesses with serious growth potential is what I’m passionate about at the end of the day anyways). Their place in campaigns and organic search (i.e. the user experience, which people pay so much lip service too but never really do?) has to be thought out and executed properly.

I’d rather see nothing at all than something with no thought behind it. The cheesy brand with the cheesy social media posts would be a turn-off, and could keep me from liking a brand I liked before I saw it. People today define themselves by brands, period. Don’t be the emperor with no clothes. It takes me and everyone else two seconds to see through it.

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