Social Media Myopia

Social media strategies are bullshit. It’s a thought crystallized by the swarm of social media experts and aficionados descending on Austin for SXSW. To be honest, I’m not even sure why it had that effect exactly. Maybe it was the 80% iPhone penetration or what the Romans called the “twitterati ubiquita.” I do think it’s largely a product of what those tools do, not just what they are, but it’s hard not to scratch your head when you say tweetdeck and there are no scrunched faces. Particularly when something like AOL community gets 4 times the traffic. The jury is clearly still out on whether twitter is an essential personal tool or the second-coming of second life.

But here’s the thing, social media is something that you are, not something you do. And when you talk about it like it’s another channel, it becomes an add-on to an existing infrastructure, not the transformational cultural shift that it should require.

Don't get me wrong, there are great social media broadcasters out there. They have tons of friends, fans or followers. But their issue is that they're not really taking full advantage of their sphere because people are coming together around a brand asset already held. And frankly, that doesn’t require all that much strategy. Coke might have a good fan group on Facebook, but that doesn't really come from anything other than a shit load of existing brand reputation. Or more simply, it's easy to get a brand talked about when everyone likes talking about them anyway. If I were the social media agency for pot, I could just start a facebook group and get 250,000 fans pretty easily and look like a hero.

But that’s really the point I think, the brands that are positioned well for facebook or twitter or myspace or whatever we’re talking about tomorrow, are so because of who they are, not what they do in any one channel. For companies to thrive, what we should be talking about is something much more fundamental, much more cultural and important than you might be able to talk about if they’ve slotted you or your company as “those guys getting us facebook hits or views on youtube.” If that’s all it’s about, you won’t be left with much when those platforms are gone. And considering that Google, a company just moving out of the dorm room 10 years ago, would be the closest thing to the quaker oats of internet brands, I’d consider the transient nature of the web to be a high-level concern for all of us.

Which is partly why I’m so taken by transmedia planning, and why I don’t consider it just a new branding technique, but the central consideration for the ad industry to not just survive year after year, but thrive through a media landscape that will look much different in 5 years. Is what we’re doing building communities, not through a series of platform tactics, but the exploration of who we are and what makes us important to them?

Do we matter?

(by the way - read Mike's take on the use of Social Media. Or how it's been used. Well worth it.)

UPDATE: These new numbers from Nielsen indicate twitter is up to 7mm uniques, twice the size of aol community, and they were roughly equal just in December, so I stand corrected on that point.