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.

Can You Automate Success? Just Ask Glen.

Is using platforms and plugins to schedule and automate your social media feeds effective? Imagine for a moment that you run a Financial Advisory firm. You hire someone to work for your company. His name is Glen, and you want Glen to generate leads for your business, build relationships, and get people to follow him back to the office for appointments. On Glen’s first day of work, he goes to a busy street corner and places a tape recorder on top of a bench. He then walks into a coffee shop where he can keep an eye on the tape recorder while he reads a book.

People walk down the street, some chatting with friends, some staring down at cell phones, while others rush by silently.  When the clock strikes 9, Glen’s voice suddenly comes out of the tape recorder, “When was the last time you spoke to your Financial Advisor? We’ve got people standing by to talk to you!”

Some of the people walking past pause when they hear the pre-recorded message but none of them stop to look for him.

This is the real life equivalent of setting up an automated social media feed. Scheduled messages come off as impersonal, perhaps even disruptive. They come off as robotic. Technology has yet to take the place of human interaction and nowhere is that more clear than on the Tweet corner (Twitter equivalent of a street corner) with Glen.

Social media is about having conversations and building relationships. It’s about community management and one to one engagement. It’s about having conversations. It’s about getting results and meeting objectives. While companies who promote the technology to automate social media feeds may call it “convenient” or even “a time saver”, what they can’t call it is effective.

And that’s the truth. Just ask Glen.

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When she’s not working as a marketing manager for Make Me Social, Mandi Frishman finds inspiration in old episodes of The Twilight Zone. 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 Limit Does Not Exist: The End Of “Social Media”

If you sit a child down with wooden blocks, how long does it take for the blocks to be transformed into a castle, a circus or a cat? The blocks themselves remain unchanged, and what they can become will only be limited by the imagination of the young architect.

At some point in the child’s life, someone may tell them that a wooden block can’t be a cat, because cats aren’t made up of harsh angles and fixed lines. The child could accept that as true or they could pick up some tools and smooth the block into the shape of a cat.

Social media is the wooden block and we are the child.

We have been handed one of the most powerful tools for expression in recent history, the building blocks of community and communication, and it is up to us to decide what we want to build. The only limits that exist are self-imposed – or in some cases, imposed at the corporate level.

So how does your business use social media internally? That’s right, internally. As in, to speed up and improve internal communications and collaboration, and build a more vibrant, engaged, community of employees.

The idea itself is not new but many businesses seem hesitant to use existing social media technologies internally. It doesn’t mesh with some preconceived notion of what social media is. Here’s an idea: forget everything that you know about social media. Forget the term “social media”. This is communication, supported by technology. This is creativity, supported by collaboration.

This is Enterprise 2.0 and it is a wooden block. What will you build?

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When she’s not working as a marketing manager for Make Me Social, Mandi Frishman enjoys hiding Mean Girls quotes in blog titles. 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.