Digital Marketing, Media, PR Analysis And Insight – The Future Buzz

I’ve shared why the concept of social media addiction makes little sense in the past, but it continues to be a popular, if inaccurate label. I expect that sort of post from Mashable or Social Media Examiner. They are media outlets and are supposed to frame industry content in a sensationalistic way. To them, it’s not about accuracy or authority, it’s about pageviews and ReTweets – and you can’t blame them, it’s their business model.

Donna Farrugia, Executive Director at The Creative Group (a staffing agency) wrote a post over at iMedia Connection this week on finding social media talent. Some of what she wrote makes sense, however there are a few items that as a practitioner, I disagree with.

I’m currently reading a fascinating book: The Invisible Gorilla: And Other Ways Our Intuitions Deceive Us. You’re already familiar with the invisible gorilla experiment if you’ve watched the popular “awareness test”
video that got passed around in 2008 (and has been viewed nearly 10 million times). That test was essentially a clone of the original experiment.

If you reach the level others are reacting to your content in a critical light, consider yourself successful. The fact you are being mentioned organically at all is a positive signal even if it does not seem that way initially. Media outlets have known this for years and by embracing it have formed pretty thick skin. They don’t take criticism personally, rather, they quietly (and sometimes loudly) leverage it to increase their own exposure.

First impressions count. Malcolm Gladwell popularized this familiar notion recently in Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking: we make snap, lasting judgments and decisions that in many cases may be permanent. Your website is offering that all too important first impression to prospective customers daily.

Last week, I presented at Search Engine Strategies Toronto on the intersection of PR, marketing and social media. After my session, a woman from the audience came up to introduce herself: she was a writer for Social Media Examiner (and extremely pleasant to speak with). We talked a bit about the industry and about blogging in general. To which she remarked I had actually upset some people over at Social Media Examiner from my response to their post on social media addiction.

Businesses and marketers continue to misunderstand how to effectively leverage the web for increasing returns on traffic and leads month over month. They place too much emphasis on a limited amount of static web pages and mentally put each one on a pedestal. Change a product page!? What? We can’t do that. Okay, we can make a tweak – but hold on while that goes through our 5 layer approval process designed during a pre-internet world.

Previously, I shared an interesting situation that erupted between Fortune Magazine and TechCrunch. It appeared to me as a case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand was doing (essentially, it looked like legal got upset with something the PR team executed on). Either way, Fortune did not come off looking good in the situation and they should know better than to agree to things they can’t fulfill.

Scott Rosenberg recently wrote a piece titled: no more bouncers at the journalism club door. It’s a good read and Scott makes quite a logical case that anyone can now do journalism. I agree, it’s no longer a special skill set unique to a select few. When every company is a media company and anyone can do journalism, the strategies of pure media companies and pure content creators take needs to change.

To those who love their jobs: purpose and passion trump profit as a motivator to produce great work. This is something I’ve been conscious of long before I started working for others. I noted this while in university – grades never motivated me nearly as much as if I viewed the subject matter as purposeful and the professor as passionate.