Content Marketing Blog
| found this on the blog of Ruth Mortimer and had to have it on mine.
You have to sit very quietly (yes that means switching twitter off) and still and think about the stuff in this clip before you can get a hint of what it might really mean. As most of you wont sit quietly and think, you will have a disadvantage to those that do.
But don’t worry, because you can hire those that do to point you in the right direction.
This is an unplanned and off the cuff series I am doing regarding Social Media and its definition, which is still in a state of flux. Part 1 and 2
It’s all about the conversation.
Not the product, not the service, and certainly not how wonderful you are.
What do you think a good conversation is? One person talking all about themselves, or trying to sell you something or being obnoxious and wafting offensive odours at you?
Good conversation flows, it’s owned by the two or more parties involved in it.
It is not where you announce something. That is not what a conversation is and that is why a lot of PR professionals have difficulty in making it work for them.
What I have learned over the years is that to be a successful social media marketing practitioner, you have go visit the tribe, sit down with them, talk their language, follow their customs and after a period of time become one of them. Then you can tell them about the cave over the next hill which is selling all kinds of goodies.
Empathy, understanding, experience, knowledge, all prerequisites if you are to converse with the tribe. And let me tell you, conversing is not a right, it is an honour. Bestowed upon you after dues have been paid.
Sitting down and breaking bread with a Chili Dorito munching, coke guzzling, Warcraft playing, Linux using inhabitant of certain social bookmarking sites is really beyond the reach of the expensively manicured fingers of the PR hustler, and that’s just the men.
Unless they become one of the them, at least for a short period.
Of course the interesting thing is the real players in the social media marketing industry have come from the SEO world.
Who else is going to empathise with a 2 hour discussion of light sabre techniques.
Eva Green Will See You Now
So says the latest cover of GQ. Personally I prefer Esquire. I can’t imagine ever reading the likes of Nuts and Zoo, but someone must.
Back to GQ, the front cover headlines reads:
Beyond Bond
Eva Green
Will see you now
20 + pages
of
Red-Hot
New
Looks
for
Spring/
Summer
Standoff
in the
Triangle
of Death
How Long Can
Iraq’s Fragile
Peace Endure?
Box Fresh
Why Mad Men
Is The Most
Stylish
Show on TV
2009’s Hottest Girls – Rebbecca Hall – Odette Yustman – Isla Fisher
There we have it, all the headlines on the front page.
They reflect the culture and interests of the targeted reader. The headlines are aspirational, the subtext being, “buy this and announce that you want an Eva Green type as your girlfriend”.
Sophisticated sexuality for the man who never has to try too hard.
Before we go any further, are you thinking of how to create headlines with similar effectiveness, I hope so.
GQ is for the metrosexual, and so includes 20 pages of fashion tips to help men become more pretty. It’s interesting as it’s hard to read these headlines whilst being completely objective, which we must be for the sake of good analysis. But these headlines are crafted to be emotional, to make it impossible not to have an opinion.
The “Iraq”, headline for example, the wording is framed to present a specific viewpoint, even though it’s in a question. It presumes the Iraqi peace is fragile or at least the reader believes it to be and that’s the point. Those with similar opinions are attracted to the magazine by association.
By making it into a question it allows those of differing views to join into the discussion, or to be part of the conversation.
As we well know, social media is all about the conversation.
There is that awful phrase, “conversation marketing”. It’s nothing new, my Grandmother’s butcher used to use it when she popped in for half a pound of scrag end.
But lets keep it on social media.
Don’t sell the product, start the conversation.
Easy for me, as I love to talk, often too much.
Here is the point of this post for those who have yet to get it.
Popular magazines are masters at starting the conversation.
Think of these headlines as Twitter posts, or headlines on digg. Some work, some do not. But, look at your social media efforts and consider creating more conversation starters than mere announcements.
You never know, you may end up with Eva Green.
Part 1 of What is Social Media is here
There is so much written, blogged, twittered about social media it’s like a thousand overweight elephants trying to get into the Krispy Kreme kiosk at Paddington Station. All at the same time.
So here it is. This is what social media is.
It’s just a bunch of people talking. And that’s it.
That is the essence. Its fundamental nature.
If you don’t get that fact, if that is not the basis of your understanding, then you don’t get social media.
Sure there are lots of forms of social media and we can go into the technical issues and the nuanced ways they are delivered, and the different tribes and culture, blah blah blah. But it’s already been done, ask the elephants munching on their Krispy Kremes
But it does not change the fact that social media is a just a bunch of people talking.