Digital Blog Articles, thoughts and tips on managing a digital presence.

Bust a social media consultant

The image is irrelevant to the context, but I figured you'd like it

So you have a meeting with a "social media consultant" to decide on the digital future of your brand, company or even yourself, here are some quick tips to bust a "social media consultant" (For the sake of this post, I will further refer to a "social media consultant" using "SMC")

1. "SMC" will often state that social media is a "free" way of connecting with your audience.....making you kind of feel that Facebook is a non profit organization aiming to help the local community and forgetting that even his mom's breast milk isn't free
2. "SMC" will often use Starbucks as an example of successful Facebook tactical activation campaigns, or page design, or content concepts. Why? Because Starbucks is an example commonly used by the documents provided freely from Facebook that you can download and learn from all by yourself
3. "SMC" will often state that "awesome" content can go viral and increase the number of fans you have on Facebook, or followers on Twitter, an example of that can be a "Good Morning" tweet posted at 10:00pm
4. "SMC" love hashtags, over the tweets, in the bio, on Facebook and on LinkedIn...Hashtags, hashtags, hashtags....they are the secret recipe of success. Example: "@SMC_Tweet: The sky is blue" is not as effective as "@SMC_Tweet: The #sky #is #blue" because in the latter, people searching for "is" will immediately identify your tweet and follow you accordingly. #Do #You #Get #it? #it #is #rather #simple, #isn't #it?
5. "SMC" will rather confuse clicks and likes when it comes to Facebook advertising
6. "SMC" will always answer you "People love you, because 50 people liked our post" when you're asking him for sentiment analysis
7. "SMC" has no problem in posting the latest Rihanna video clip on your page promoting your local church, because it is cool, and people like that...all the people like that! ALL OF THEM!
8. "SMC" never need your help in handling crisis, because there are no crisis...NEVER!
9. "SMC" rarely understands ubiquity and it doesn't matter anyways
10. "SMC" confirms that the "upload your picture" competitions are the best on Facebook, and the "RT if..." tweets are the most awesome things that ever happened
11. After "SMC" handles your presence, his personal account and his other anonymous account are the ones that are mostly mentioning your brand (A couple of his personal friends might pop up as well in the reports)

A couple of notes, "SMC" has been constantly put between quotes, because I still have respect for those who do this job seriously and have hands on expertise in the field. Additionally, the above mentioned points are stuff that I have actually heard out there, in this vast and virgin market.

If you haven't exceeded your reading quota, you can read that other post I wrote....I am pretty sure you will find the link by yourself.

Cheers.

Social Media – The non-functional magical wand

He is a consultant too

I'll keep it short and straight to the point.

If you are a business tapping onto social networks...Print the below and post it on your CEO, Marketing director and your desk.

Social Media IS NOT:

• Your temple
• A magic wand that will increase sales, walk-in customers and brand equity as soon as you create the Facebook page and Twitter account
• A one way communication channel, where everybody is dying to hear about your offers and promotion
• A platform to tell the people about your Great CEO activities, and how great your business is
• To be mixed up. In other words do not link your Facebook account with your Twitter account because nobody understand what a hashtag is on Facebook, and nobody gives a shit if you uploaded 30 new pictures to your Facebook album on Twitter
• A place to lie about your actual greatness
• A place to avoid people queries and dilute them in more bullshit

Subsequently,

FUCK YOU if:

• You never followed anyone on Twitter
• You never based your business, operational, marketing and sales decisions based on the feedback you have received
• You never said anything useful to your community
• You never came up with unique and original content for your community
• You never rewarded your community (And by reward, I do not mean that you made a PFU (Photo-Fucking-Upload) competition and selected the most talented cheater)
• You have a Gazillion fans on Facebook and only you and your boss are 'talking about this'

One more thing,

Sex, and the female body in general does gather some additional followers / likers, but never belonging to your target audience. Ask the nearest wanker to you. In practical terms, boobs, lips, legs and sexy women might get you a couple of additional likes and followers, but they are typically useless.

Thanks!