All Truly Great Thoughts Are Achieved on Twitter

When was the last time you stopped and really thought about social media? I’m not talking about strategy, or metrics, or the most efficient methods of raising the virality of your posts. Stop thinking like a marketer, or a business owner, and start thinking like a philosopher. In short, stop asking ‘how?’ and start asking ‘why.’ Why do consumers visit Facebook? Why do teenagers, industry influencers, and celebrities devote hours a day to watching text scroll by on Twitter? In most cases, we can safely say that they aren’t there to visit you.

Social media is supposed to be fun, funny, entertaining. America’s businessmen aren’t wasting their workday on Facebook reading about B2B sales opportunities. They’re tending virtual farms. They’re chuckling at the latest Memebase post, or making plans with buddies for after-work drinks.

I know, I know, these are things you’ve heard a thousand times before. “You need to be more conversational,” or “we should be altering our tone to match the audience.” Stop it. Stop thinking strategy. You don’t need to enter every social conversation with an agenda. When you enter every conversation as a brand, and not a person, you come off sounding like a machine. Sometimes, it may be OK to engage with your audience without worrying about how “it fits into the broader picture of your brand identity.”

Sometimes, isn’t it OK to talk like people? Isn’t it OK to drop the brand-speak and interact on a basic, human level? Obviously, I’m not suggesting you drop everything and abandon your brand. However, once in a great while, let some humanity slip in. This Media Minion blog says it perfectly:

“Humor in a big brand’s social media marketing has pretty much the same effect as seeing a teacher outside of school; “Woah, they’re real people?”

Ambrose Bierce once said “Wit- the salt with which the American humorist spoils his intellectual cookery by leaving it out.” Humor is the essential seasoning for an engagement casserole, so feel free to sprinkle a little bit onto your next post.”

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Tim Howell is a community manager and data analyst for Make Me Social. He studied fine art, psychology, and international pop culture at Bowling Green State University. In his spare time, he is a novelist and social activist.

Three Things to Keep in Mind When Investing in New Ideas

As a specialized agency, we often find ourselves integrated into client teams in an advisory role. We live and breathe technology and communications; consuming information, creating experiences, and collaborating with vendors. We help clients and partners ask the questions that get them the solutions that they need.

If you want to advocate on behalf of your company, here are three things to keep in mind the next time that you’re looking to invest in new technology:

1. Everyone is selling the next big idea. It’s important to understand your needs and be able to make those needs the focal point of any discussion.
2. When you’re relying on the person pitching you for an education, the information that you’re given is most likely going to be delivered in a way that supports their agenda. Do your own research.
3. Know what questions to ask.

The most important question that you can ask yourself when dealing with companies and vendors in the communications and technology space is:

Do I know enough about this to make an educated decision?

If the answer is no, find a trusted partner who can sit in and advocate on behalf of your brand. Investing in good advice upfront can you save you from a bad investment down the road.

Seem simple? The best advice usually is.

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When she’s not working as a marketing manager for Make Me Social, Mandi Frishman enjoys the simple things in life. During her time studying at The University of Florida, Mandi became convinced in the power of learning through play. She has since committed herself to playing (and learning) all day, every day.

The Agency of the Future

This post is the first of the Make Me Social Guest Blogger Series, written by respected partners and friends of the agency.

Why Agencies should act more like Tech Start Ups  is a conversation that was started about 6 months ago and is an important way of looking at the changing advertising environment.  The key point being that ‘advertising’ (as we know it) should be adapted from focusing on that ‘One Big Creative Idea’ to testing and trying out more nimble and flexible ideas and integrating them into existing (and future) technological distributions channels.  Bottom line: Each ‘Creative Idea’ should possess a Raison d’être for each channel. And if it doesn’t, why do it?

While the above proposes a radical shift from the traditional thinking about advertising, some of the most seasoned professionals are slowly adopting these practices into their own approaches to work.  While explaining the testing and pushing content out in mass, Steve Rubel, EVP/Global Strategy and Insights for Edelman notes, “I like to say that we rain on people every day, and we hope that eventually we drop enough rain to cause a behavior change and somebody says, ‘I gotta buy an umbrella.’ It used to just take a drizzle; it now takes a monsoon.”  Jon Steinberg, president of Buzz Feed proposes developing “…a more nimble, flexible approach to advertising….GE might release 30, 40, or 50 videos…and should expect that only a few of them will really catch on. Brands shouldn’t stress out about the ones that don’t take off —they just need to feel comfortable with the idea that anything they release might get shared widely.”

While both of these approaches are definitely steps in the right direction; there is one inherent flaw with both: Even if you tell an amazing story, develop it in diverse manners and distribute in a zillion different channels, chances are very high that your message will still get lost in the shuffle. So how do you solve that conundrum?

There isn’t one definitive answer, but an excellent path to follow has been trail-blazed by Indie Shop and AdWeek’s 2011 Agency of the Year: AKQA. Nike, Audi and Google are all clients and have had bon-a-fide successes; however, it is under the hood where businesses and agencies need to look to see how AKQA has persevered.   Their key is to insist on marrying technology and creativity in order to solve business challenges that industries (they work with) haven’t even sorted out yet.

Case in point: How do you showcase Audi’s Thermal Imaging Night Vision Assistant?  Like This:

Originally only meant only for the web, Trick? or Treat? was so appropriate from both a timing and solution standpoint, it was expanded to run on national TV during the Halloween season.   This example, like other work from AKQA, does not happen in a vacuum.  “Torrence Boone, managing director of agency business development at Google, says that AKQA is ‘one of the most sophisticated of the agencies in terms of how to leverage digital platforms. . . for their clients.’ It takes a decent amount of thought and collaboration to come up with this unique approach to solving challenges such as these. AKQA has coined their approach: the Interface Design Practice.In this practice, a team of both creatives and technologists (specific to each platform) study a client’s audience to understand their behavioral tendencies and then ideate around each specific platform for their intended audiences.  Once they have a few ideas they begin to flesh it out in tandem with the client and the intended audience in real time (or as close to as possible).  By working in tandem with their partners, no longer can a client deflect responsibility of a failure to the agency or viceversa.  Both entities work together to garner the best possible solution.  And each team member – on both sides of the fence – have specific roles to which they are held accountable.Many agencies and business owners aren’t quite ready for this type of collaboration yet, but the forward thinking ones are actively moving in this direction together.

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Robert Andrade is a Digital Media Consultant for Make Me Social, Director of Social Media for Autumn Games and President of Auspicious Media.