OK, Gurus, They Did What You Said. Now What?

Last night I heard a phrase that catches my ear every time I hear it used in advertising, "Log on to our..." It irks me because we don't "log-on to" anything unless it's secure and requires a user name and password. We simply "go" to your website, we don't log onto it.

Anyway, that's a minor and debatable point. This time the ad said "Log-on to our Facebook page." The ad was for a group of regional medical centers, but everything else in the ad was lost to me, as I wasn't listening until the Facebook part. I'm sure it had to do with the chain of hospitals' commitment to "quality care, innovation and helping our community," three bullets that took the internal CMO and his committees 18 months to agree on.

And now they're on Facebook, just like the big boys. They're using Social Media! Just like they've been reading about in every magazine, probably including a very interesting piece in Hospital Marketing Monthly titled something like "Opening the Conversation: 10 Ways to Engage your Patients and Prospective Patients using Social Media." Just like a bunch of consultants told them they should. Just like their incompetent marketing agency pretended to know all about. It probably took them forever to get it all approved and there is probably a rigorous process of checks and edits before anything gets posted on their Facebook page, but they're finally there. And I'm sure someone in HR or Communications sent out a notice, or wrote a nice story in the company's employee newsletter, announcing that "We are Moving into Social Media!" and urged all hospital employees to friend, fan or follow their employer, thus instantly creating the illusion of popularity.

I'm sure they're patting themselves on the back at this point, delighted that they finally did what they've been hearing about for so long. And now they will sit and wait. And then they will start to wonder, "Was the only reason we did this so that we can post press releases and photos of employee events?" Then the CMO will say to his team(s), "I'm hearing a lot about this Twitter thing. I think we should create a committee to study a Twitter strategy and then recommend some initiatives." And in about six months they might set up a Twitter account, and within it they will post links to their Facebook photos and generic, mundane press releases. They might even hire a consultant who is an expert in Twitter Strategies, who will show them a presentation saying as much.

Everyone's on Facebook now, gurus. And they all have a Twitter account. Are you going to now recommend they be on Google Buzz? You used to tell them they needed a blog, and so they started a blog. Then they abandoned that because it quickly proved to be a pointless exercise in self-promotion that no one ever read, much less commented on. (Hell, even the new media agencies that used to advocate blogs don't bother to update their own blogs anymore.) And the YouTube channel you insisted they create isn't getting any views. And their MySpace page is dormant. (Yeah, you recommended a MySpace "presence," remember?) In their ignorance, they accidentally but wisely declined your urging to open up a shop in Second Life.

At some point, the game is going to be up. The doors are starting to close as everyone tells you, "We already have someone working on that," or "We took that in-house last year." And even you can't fool the laundromat, the local pack-and-ship place or that quirky-cool restaurant you found downtown that they need to hire a Social Media Expert. Perhaps after the speaking gigs dry up and your vast knowledge of how to navigate this "crazy new frontier" is just plain old common knowledge, you will close up shop and start looking for a real job. Maybe the hospital chain will hire you as their New Media Strategist, and you can sit in a cubicle and update the Facebook page and monitor talk of your company on Twitter, where you will be pasting pre-approved 140-character responses to angry customers in between linking to photos of the employees at their recent 5K run.

But you and I know an intern can do that.

Enrage The Consumer

I know there has to be a way to utilize blogs, vlogs, RSS, etc. to "engage the consumer," but it has to start with worthwhile content. Nobody cares about your corporate blog or any of your other social media efforts unless you are saying something worth talking about.

Or as Toad puts it, your brand is not my friend.








The latest installment in the royalty-free clipart comic called "Where's My Jetpack?" (You'll note a severe lack of diversity in these comics. That's not my fault. This particular series of clipart I'm ripping off appears to have been drawn in Idaho. Although, the guy above could be Hispanic.)

Face It: There are Too Many Social Options

Got this auto IM this morning from Facebook. I was apparently invited to join by a colleague.

I'm on MySpace in two places. I'm on LinkedIn. I've got Skype. I signed up for Twitter, but in order to put it on this blog I'd have to change my template, which would be a pain given all the mods I made to this template. I'm on AdGabber, a service of Ning. I've got 4 separate screennames on AIM. I get email on Google, Yahoo!, my local provider at home and two different work accounts. I also have dormant accounts at LiveJournal, GarageBand, PureVolume and a few more. I'm signed on to a few forums and stay updated on too many blogs. I just don't want to keep track of one more social media hotspot. I don't care what you're doing 24/7. Nor should you care what I'm doing.

Can we leave some places for the high school & college kids? Must we invade every place and turn it into another noisy midway of carnival barkers, driving the kids elsewhere again? Aren't you guys connected enough? I think some of you would die if you unplugged.

(And I will never play in Second Life. My first life is busy enough.)