Archive | February, 2012

Every day, I hear or a read on a social media blog that someone needs to “start doing the work.” Hell, I told people the same thing yesterday.

But nobody actually knows what the fuck social media work is.

You think in the circle jerk of passionate, loving social media folks, we’d gladly support each other’s work because we all have been through it.

But no. We all bitch that everyone else needs to get off their ass and do the work.

It’s easy to criticize someone’s work when all you see is a handful of tweets, YouTube videos, and Facebook updates because these seem so insignificant. It seems like anyone can just hop on Twitter and start writing a bunch of promotional messages and gathering followers.

What you don’t see is the boatload of emails trying to get a 48 pixel avatar correct with the design team. The messages across the company trying to resolve a customer service issue. The stress of trying to cram a bunch of mandated information into a format that doesn’t support what the communications department is determined cram down your followers’ throats.

You don’t read the 25 page strategy and planning document that someone spent an entire month working on, only to have it rejected by a troll who hasn’t touched the internet.

So get off your high horse and stop complaining that other people don’t do social media work when they don’t tweet/blog/pinterest/Google+/Facebook like you do.

Just because you don’t see their work doesn’t mean they aren’t doing it.

You may be hearing things like “Appearances matter” or “Don’t look like a slob” or “Bathing is important to your hygiene.”

These are all lies.

As a social media professional, you live on the internet, not the real world. This is a word where you are judged entirely on the look of your avatar.

This means for many of you, personal hygiene only needs to be minimum at best. As long as you look sharp in that avatar, you should be fine.

If you’re dealing with someone via Skype or some other video chat, then you need to clean yourself up a bit to look like your avatar. But, even then you’ll only need to clean yourself up as much as you’ll appear in the camera. This may need to involve washing your face with soap and water and combing your hair.

I know. It’s hard.

You’ll eventually have to meet someone in real life. They’ll probably want to “pick your brain.” This is as awful and horrifying as it sounds.

In this case, you will need to clean yourself up to look like your avatar. Get as much advance notice as possible so you can fully bath and dress appropriately. You may need to do laundry.

Thankfully, these instances are few and far between. As long as you’re able to look amazing in your avatar and give the illusion you aren’t a disgusting slob, then you’ll be fine.

So take a great photo, give it that photoshop sheen, and kick some ass.

I get a lot of press releases about new social networks.

Apparently, PR people think a guy who writes about how much he despises social media with every fiber of his very being wants to try out new social networks for fun and then write about them.

Right.

So, I read through these press releases, and almost always, I’m curious about how bad these social networks are. And almost always, they’re appallingly bad.

We added the ability to dislike things!  You can only have 25 friends! You have a better illusion about the ability to control your data!

Yes, those are the features that people are just dying to share with all their friends. Because everyone loves it when a friend tells them they are disliked.

Social networks aren’t built on one feature alone. It takes a set of complex features tied together to a network of people who produce enough interesting content to make me stay on the site. And that’s really damn hard to build.

I’m certainly willing to try a new social network, but give me a more compelling reason than one dumb feature.

And don’t send me an entire press release. I don’t have time to read all of that BS.