The Truth About the Social Media Hype

Don’t trust anyone who says they’ll reveal the “secrets of social media.” There are no secrets of social media. As someone who’s seen the bubble of the early web and new media business burst, I’m feeling a sense of déjà vu, says Aliza Sherman, strategic social media consultant with Conversify.

There are people who make a good living off hype and the naiveté of others. They see a short window of time when people are still in learning mode or “behind the curve,” and they swoop in with shiny promises bathed in snake oil, take as much money as they can get, then run.
The rest of us are left here in their greedy and destructive wake to pick up the pieces and, worse, to deal with the disillusionment of people who’ve been burned by a con artist claiming to know the “secrets” of social media that will make everyone rich.

We’ve been here before. Some new technological developments (the web, for instance) have had a major impact on how we communicated and did business. Unfortunately, everyone treated these technical advances as the silver bullet, the cure-all magic potion, the most important thing we must all now embrace lest we get left behind and suffer in a life of failure.

The 5 C’s of the Web and Social Media
1. Communications. The Internet and the Web were technologies that were transforming the way we communicated.
2. Connection. Being online connected us to people and to information more quickly and easily than ever before.
3. Community. The Internet and Web was bringing together like-minded people for mutual support and friendship.
4. Convenience. Using the Internet could close distances, reduce time, and help us do things more efficiently and effectively.
5. Creativity. The Web was helping to “level the playing field,” putting tools of creation in the hands of the individual.
Today, with the advent of social media — a vast and growing set of tools with greater interactive (“social”) functionality — we still have the same 5 C’s:
1. Communications: Check. Although now we’re calling this “Conversations.”
2. Connection: Check. Our connections to people are augmented through social networking functions. Our connections to information are augmented through feeds and sharing functions. We’re so connected now, our minds are boggled.
3. Community: Check. Social networking functions enhance the ways we can start and grow communities.
4. Convenience: Check. Never before have we had so much information and so many tools at our fingertips.
5. Creativity: Check. From the ease of setting up a blog to building a presence on a social network, anyone with access to the Internet and a computer can create and publish virtually anything online.

• Social media won’t save the world. The social web — along with increased access to broadband and wireless/mobile networks — is bringing more people together. But the tools that make up “social media” are not world-savers. People can save the world; social media tools can help people to make positive change.
• Social media won’t save the economy. Just as the Web and new media companies got investors excited and Wall Street aflutter, so does anything new and promising. Investors, like entrepreneurs, take risks and that is a good thing. LinkedIn going public isn’t going to change our society or our economy. It will make a few people rich on paper and may start a VC frenzy for a while, then everything will shake out.
• Social media won’t save your life. Now I can point to many examples of people who will say the Internet saved their life or Twitter saved their life. But the truth is that other people saved their lives and all the Internet — or Twitter, or Facebook, or the blogosphere – did was make it easier to reach out and to be reached.

The social web is made up of people connecting with one another or to information that is important to them. We don’t all need social networks and blogs and Twitter to succeed at anything.
We can augment our efforts with social media tools and tactics, but if our intentions are bad, greedy, evil and destructive, we will continue to hurt others and ourselves despite the promise of new technologies. As long as we continue to buy into the hype of new technologies and look to communications tools and platforms to save us, we’re doomed. We need to conduct business well, provide quality products or services, care about our customers and give back to our communities.

The Case For Government-Funded Journalism

By Derek Thompson, an associate editor at The Atlantic, Published in the Washington Post
What should we call dumb news stories that inspire smart debates? Sarah Palin's "death panel" comment was self-refudiating, but it galvanized a fruitful discussion about rationing Medicare spending and end-of-life choices. Rep. Joe Wilson's "you lie" outburst was a silly break in decorum, but it inspired some intelligent takes on the responsibility of government to undocumented immigrants.

You could say the same about the GOP's effort to punish NPR for firing Juan Williams by cutting funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. On the one hand, this is political theater, and it's not a terribly precise performance, at that. (The CPB doesn't directly support NPR. Instead, it funds between 10 and 16 percent of public radio stations that pay NPR for programming.)

On the other hand, maybe we should take this debate seriously. Does it make sense for government to support the news? I lean toward saying yes.
Your first objection might be: Derek, you can't trust government-supported journalism to critically cover government. My answer would be, maybe you can't. But everybody else seems to. Publicly supported media like the BBC, PBS and NPR are more trusted than "independent" news like Fox or MSNBC. If we think publicly supported news is discredited by its relationship to government, we seem to consider privately supported news even more discredited by the race to the bottom to attract an audience for its ads.
Okay, you respond, but that's a cheap response. Capitalism has to allow for winners and losers. We don't bail out florists or hot dog vendors who go bankrupt. What's so special about the news?

Well, news isn't like flowers or sausages. It's more like universities and research, which are publicly supported without much controversy because they're seen as offering wide benefits that cannot be captured in profit. As my friend Conor Clarke put it, "the government can and should close the gap between the individual value and the social value." Articles about cars and celebrities regularly attract more attention with less effort than articles about foreign affairs and public policy. I'm sure Nick Denton could make a compelling argument that each individual viewer is 100% justified in preferring to read about McLarens than Medicare. But is society better off if each individual viewer makes that choice?

It's becoming clear that somebody has to close the gap between the great need and small demand for in-depth reporting. Maybe it's a foundation, maybe it's one rich guy, and maybe it's the government. All of three benefactors could theoretically compromise news-gathering, but I don't see any hard proof that one is so much worse than the others. Convince me otherwise?

How Big Companies Have Overcome Branded Content Challenges

Brands have been in the content business for more than 50 years, but some of the biggest marketers in the world -- including General Electric and Johnson & Johnson -- are today finding that emerging media and digital platforms are dramatically changing the game in terms of how that content is distributed and how consumer conversations can be controlled.

Judy Hu, senior global executive director, advertising and branding at GE, recalls the squeamishness she and colleagues felt back in 2003, when GE adopted its "Imagination at Work" positioning to help approach the world's toughest challenges -- from clean energy to health care. The move meant not only embracing new content platforms to drive innovation, but also enlisting the help of consumers with GE's messaging. We had to "stop talking at them -- which frankly is our own personal comfort zone -- and give them license to get involved in marketing campaigns," Ms. Hu said. "It was very risky for GE. None of us knew what to expect."

To promote an initiative it calls "healthy imagination," GE created a series of cheeky online videos featuring fun ways to improve one's health. Among them were "how to party your way to better health" and tips like "contract your abs while driving." It then enlisted half a dozen YouTube stars for a humorous get-healthy challenge that garnered, to GE's surprise, 7 million video views and thousands of ratings and comments. GE also partnered with publisher Meredith to help build a community of women around the "healthy imagination" idea. GE found they could start influencing the conversation without making it about ill health, but instead about making good health contagious; and discovered that if they enlist the imagination of their content creators and consumers, they can really get engagement with their brand.

The reason that branded content is now a hot topic is the fact that digital changes the ways to connect ... brands can be in control of both the content and the distribution. Johnson & Johnson's BabyCenter has a 78% reach of new and expectant mothers -- pretty good penetration for a web property owned by a brand. Brands are currently leveraging four key models for owned media, and each has its pros and cons.

1. Publisher collaboration
This model is the one we're most familiar with these days, whereby publishers buy agencies, or collaborate with them. The big pro here is that publishers have expertise in content creation because they've been doing it for a long time, but they still have existing ad relationships, which can make for a messy model.

2. Brands going it alone
This path lets brands be selfish, because historically, they like control over creating experiences themselves. It also creates a new revenue stream the marketer doesn't have to share. But the problem is that it is expensive when you're not sharing costs, and scalability becomes tougher.

3. Agency partners
On the positive side, agencies have proficiency in building brand experiences; many have solid marketer and media relationships, and can be flexible with staffing. Agencies are used to growing and shrinking faster than many other companies. But a drawback in working with agencies is their inexperience in creating unbiased content and entertainment. Further, there is incremental funding needed to drive audiences. Publishers already have audiences, whereas agencies need to buy audiences via search or other means.

4. New media creators
New media creators have technology at their core. They also have flexibility in staffing too. A downside though, is the difficulty in choosing the right partner when many of them have only been around six, 12 or 18 months, and the business models are still being defined.