You may become Internet famous in social media. What does that mean, and why should a corporate marketer care? So you can become one of the cool kids, of course!
And who doesn’t want to be a rock star? Simply act like a wild, crazy, heroin-addicted drunken pirate, respond to everyone, and get lots of love online! Then you can have tons of social network friends, get asked to speak at lots of echo chamber conferences, and maybe even make a little scratch!
Not bad! Especially when the parasocial benefits start rolling in!
Of course, as an organizational communicator may want to hire someone to leverage their social media fame. And why not bring in someone else with online experiences for the company or non-profit? It saves time!
But communicators beware. While great at creating their own personal brands, a vast majority of these Internet rock stars — a.k.a. social media experts — have not been trained in core communications theory, nor do they have significant communications experience.
“Dude, you don’t know the rules! There is no market for messages.”
And while that profound Cluetrain statement is true, knowing the path’s dangers does not usually translate into branding or marketing expertise. These so called experts can tell you how to blog, execute a tactic or two, but can’t deliver the strategic goods. They don’t understand stakeholder groups, the need to execute in the media forms with concentrated pools of stakeholders, or building a tangential conversation (a.k.a. value proposition) on an organization’s and stakeholder group’s common interests. Popularity contests do not equal ROI.
But hey, the good news is you’ll likely receive a great conversation map or social graph or chart or thingie! That’ll keep the boss busy for a while (image by trumpetflickr)!
Maybe it’s better to check to see if these famous consultants have done any prior work first.
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Social Media is an ongoing series. The first entry was “Shiny Object Syndrome.“
I would disagree that popularity contests do not equal ROI. The more visible you are in some of these online landscapes, the more trustworthy and effective you are in doing your job – if it is indeed involving the online space – and the more people will come knocking on your door, with cash in hand and willing to spend their time and money on you.
Fair enough, Jen. I agree if Internet fame is applied to an intelligent business plan it can benefit a company a la Gary Vaynerchuk and WineLibrary.tv. But usually that’s not the case. Consider that Julia Allison still doesn’t make money for her company, or even individually from her fame (see WIRED cover story for substantiation). Can you provide some additional examples of where that’s delivered ROI for a company?
Geoff, love this topic.
Over the past few weeks one thing that has been dragging me down a bit is the fact that folks scream out that we need more proof and case studies. Yet those same people, some part of the “Internet Famous” group and many from the “Social Media Experts”crew, ignore the case studies already on sites like yours, mine and many others. This hit home for me over the past two months as we unveiled many of the results (good and bad) of our use of social media.
Are these folks simply scared that proof of people actually doing this stuff, and not just pontificating, will take away some of their consulting cash or start to dim the shine on their personal branding? Are the “do’ers” a threat to the “talkers”?
I think it is critical at this stage to get the conversation to be around best practices and proof, rather than what tool you use, who “owns” social media or how many subscribers you have on FriendFeed. But this conversation makes me feel a bit like Sisyphus, because I think we were having it 12 months ago.
/kff
Kyle: We definitely were having this conversation last year because there were not a lot of marketing case studies. There are now, but we also have a brand new rash of Internet famous social media experts trying to leverage their notoriety and become corporate marketing consultants.
These guys are killing us… Not just with competition, but then with bad social media. Because they don’t understand companies or corporate communications and marketing they inevitably fail. You can understand the very basic tactics, but without strategy you will fail.
“When everyone is somebody, then no one’s anybody.” -W.S. Gilbert
Nicely summed up Geoff. So much of online popularity is completely shallow these days. I wish more of it were actually based on substance, but not sure that will (or can) ever really happen (with a few exceptions). Looks like a good series shaping up – slap some sense into this social media space.
Next topic, Geoff please… I think I swallowed my throat as I am neither popular nor sensible – not that I aspire to be but can’t help saying to myself ‘leverage’ for the shallowness of it all and in the name of a good cause.
Best.
alain
mor.ph
It is now so much easier to get noticed online. You “will” attract crowds of eager subscribers, followers or customers if, the only place for them to go, when they are searching in your niche, is any one of your profile pages.