Writing Boots

On communication, professional and otherwise.

Three kinds of companies that should NOT be on social media

06.19.2012 by David Murray // Leave a Comment

I was trying to outrun a storm on my motorcycle or I would have stopped and taken a picture: of a tumble-down roadhouse on an Illinois country road. Pool and darts. The sign out front that should have advertised two-for-one happy hour Miller Lite pitchers said, "Like us on Facebook."

Laughing into the wind, I thought of a friend who called the other day. She runs a little marketing business and she's tired of writing proposals for clients who say they want a social media plan but who don't have the time or energy or personality to transform some unsuspecting group of busy human beings into avid "followers" of their organization, on social media.

"Then it becomes a failed campaign," she said, wearily. For her, I thought I'd write this post as something to show potential clients in lieu of a proposal. It's a rundown of the sorts of companies that should not bother with social media—and should not bother my marketing friend for a social media proposal.

1. Ziggy. The day I moved into my condo seven years ago, the Eastern European guy who installed my furnace took a Sharpie pen and scrawled his name, "Ziggy" on my furnace—it's short for Zigauskas or something—along with his phone number. When my furnace fucks up, about once a year, I take my cordless phone and pad over to the furnace and dial Ziggy's number. Between these incidents, I do not want to get industry news from Ziggy, exchange views with Ziggy, consume creative content from Ziggy or think for one goddamn minute about Ziggy. The feeling, I imagine, is mutual.

2. Your name is Garoon. In an out-of-the-way factory on the north side of Chicago, you run a company that braids little wires together to make big cables. You aren't passionate about cables, and you certainly don't bother to dream up branding slogans about how cables connect the whole world together. And you sure as shit don't want to exchange information with the broader cable-knitting community, otherwise known as your competitors. You're a regular guy trying to make a dollar, and all the people who work for you are in it for the same unlovely but honest purpose. That's it, and that's all. But if you haven't updated the lobby since 1962, I don't reckon you'll update your Twitter feed much either.

3. My old college roommate Gillespie, who once turned to me and, at rock bottom on a Wednesday afternoon couch rot, said, "Wash my hair." Now, he's a businessman who has learned how to delegate everything except social media. And so he has no social media presence. Generally, if you have made it this long without a social media strategy—seriously, you're like four years late for being two years late for being a year behind—you probably don't fuckin' need one. And hiring a marketing person to give you a strategy is kind of like asking a popular kid to tell you how to make a bunch of friends and build a busy social calendar. They can sort of tell you how—in a tentative way that says, "You really don't know how to do this?" But they can't even begin to do it for you. You can't outsource—or plan, for that matter—the essential elements of your social media presence any more than you can outsource your socializing.

I respect you Gillespies, you Garoons, you Ziggies. I'm grateful to you—for the useful work you do, and the unpretentious way you go about it. But quit bugging my marketing friend for social media proposals.

She can help you with media. But she can't make you social.

Categories // Uncategorized Tags // social media, social media strategy

The best way not to be seen as hypocritical is not to be a hypocrite. And so on.

03.28.2011 by David Murray // 7 Comments

The PR guru and longtime correspondent Fraser Seitel has a good piece today at Ragan.com self-explanatorily titled, "Like your PR job? Then keep your Twitter trap shut."

Lamenting the fate of several PR pros who have recently Tweeted their jobs away, Sad & Wise Seitel elaborates:

"… you want to keep your job, especially in the practice of public relations, then you must subordinate your right to tweet or blog to the interests of your client. If what you would like to tweet or blog won’t reflect well on your client, then you simply shouldn’t do it—unless, of course, you are willing to part with that portion of your income."

Impossible to disagree with that, but another obvious point goes unmade: The foolproof way to avoid saying something that would cross your client is to find clients whose interests generally don't disagree with your beliefs and whose brand matches your communication style.

Categories // Uncategorized Tags // Fraser Seitel, free speech, public relations, social media, Twitter

Let’s make conferences just like the Internet!

04.27.2010 by David Murray // 11 Comments

Denise Graveline is one eloquent woman. In fact, she is The Eloquent Woman, bringing her good brain and her vast experience as a writer and as a communicator to her blog posts "on women and public speaking." I'm such a fan of Graveline that I've made her posts a regular part of Vital Speeches' website.

But recently Graveline advanced a gravely misguided but currently conventional idea about the future of business conferences.

She wants to transform conferences into the very flickering, helterskelter social-media shitstorm from which they are now our only port.

Et tu, E.W?

In a post titled "Remixing the conference: 5 cues for organizers," Graveline acknowledges that traditional conferences, allow attendees to "connect with lots of others with shared interests, interact with experts, get recognition from their peers, and find lots of high-quality content and plain old schmoozing opportunities."

That's a lot to do in two or three days! Alas, say Graveline and her cohorts in confab complication, it's just not enough anymore. That's because attendees are so used to social media, Graveline says, that "they are way ahead of [conference] organizers … demanding more and better content, audio-visual support for audience-members on the backchannel, and options for watching the conference from afar and for free."

Specifically, Graveline recommends that conference organizers:

• encourage and actually help facilitate audience live-tweeting of the conference

• indulge audiences' ADD: "audiences are looking for shorter speaking times, varied session length and even more content," Graveline claims without a durned bit of evidence

• elicit and pump in the reaction of far-flung audiences who are absentmindedly gazing at the sessions on video conference or glancing at handouts online.

Though there are some good ideas on Graveline's list (for instance, she points out that conference organizers can use social media to solicit and vet potential speakers) … mostly, the post makes me wonder when the last time Graveline and has really been to a conference.

Mentally, I mean.

Because in my conference-going experience both recent and past, a traditional conference is itself a tsunami of stimuli. Surrounded by one's peers in the flesh for the first and last time in a while, one is simultaneously struggling to absorb new ideas from speakers, and to imagine how those ideas might be modified and applied back at the office.

Hour upon hour, session after session, more ideas, more reactions, both intellectual and emotional. Notes scribbled, business-cards collected, hands shaken, social fuck-ups made and self-forgiven, bad sessions walked out on, good sessions walked in on, the exhibit hall slinked through, dinearounds signed up for, at the bar for one more, blinky breakfast roundtables barely made.

There are new people to meet, old colleagues to catch up with and random encounters to contend with and to integrate into the experience. All the while checking voice mail and e-mail to make sure a hundred crises haven't erupted back at the office. Oh, and speaking of the office …

… toward the end of the event, the pressure builds to sum up the conference for your boss who fought for the budget money to send you, and for your colleagues, who have been covering for you all week.

What did you get out of it? What did you come away with? Any ideas we can use?

By the time you get on the plane, your head is overstuffed with techniques, case studies, the odd-but-nagging opinions of others, half-developed theses of your own—and if it was a truly productive event, it's a little achy from booze, too.

And to this Denise Graveline wants to add constant tweeting and live-blogging, more and shorter sessions, a sense that Unseen Others Are Watching and Listening on the "backchannel," and erratic input from a global peanut gallery?

I read Graveline's list from the point of view of a conference organizer, too. I are one.

And as a conference organizer, I realize that one of the most important gifts I can give my attendees is a respite from the random. A conference, however overwhelming for those who are really interested in acquainting themselves with new people and ideas, is a comfort, because it's here and now and us and nobody else.

To make conferences better, we ought to make them not more like a schizophrenic Twitter feed, but less.

And not less of an intimate, shared experience, but more of one.

Yes, one.

Categories // Uncategorized Tags // "Remixing the conference", conference organizers, Denise Graveline, modern conferences, social media

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • Next Page »

Now Available

An Effort to Understand

Order Now

SIGN UP TO RECEIVE BLOG UPDATES

About

David Murray writes on communication issues.
Read More

 

Categories

  • Baby Boots
  • Communication Philosophy
  • Efforts to Understand
  • Happy Men, and Other Eccentrics
  • Human Politicians
  • Mister Boring
  • Murray Cycle Diaries
  • Old Boots
  • Rambling, At Home and Abroad
  • Sports Stories
  • The Quotable Murr
  • Typewriter Truths
  • Uncategorized
  • Weird Scenes Inside the Archives

Archives

Copyright © 2023 · Log in

  • Preorder An Effort to Understand
  • Sign Up for Blog Updates
  • About David Murray