Let Me Explain...

Recently, I have been seeing a lot of this type of stuff in my feed, and it’s time to cut this shit out.

At some point in the past, some “internet marketing guru” claimed that a great way to boost fans and followers on social media was by offering them a small prize for specific milestones. At the time this began to be fashionable, it was done a little more subtly than the example above. 

And it worked. 

But, what did it prove, exactly? That people could be bought for small amounts, and you could artificially inflate your numbers.

And yet, companies as large as Pepsi do this kind of crappy routine on a semi-regular basis. In the example above, they decided 3000 was a nice number to get to. But WHY?

This type of promotion is based on an old-school one (the 1 000 000th customer at the grocery store/bank/etc.) but those types of promotions remembered the fundamental thing these Facebook numbers race promos forgot: PEOPLE power these promotions.

In the case of the  1 000 000th bank customer, the other people turning up to the bank would start talking to one another, and most likely the bank arranged for some type of entertainment, or free donuts, or something to bolster the excitement they were trying to incite.

Now let’s go back to the “become our 3000th fan” example. What, other than a gift card is being offered to bolster the excitement? Is there even a conversation being entered into?

BL Ochman posted a brilliant takedown of GM’s unilateral “getting out of Faceboook ads” proclamation, where she listed some great examples of conversation NON-starters which the brand had posted recently. What was “in it” for the end users there? Some of the updates didn’t even enable you to post a comment, as they were dead end comments. 

It seems trite, but it bears repeating: IF YOU WOULDN’T DO IT OR SAY IT TO SOMEONE IN FRONT OF YOU, DON’T DO IT ONLINE.

In Salad King’s case, why was 3000 so important to them? Even knowing this might have been interesting to their fanbase (although, “let’s beat Liberty Noodle” is still a flimsy premise, and I don’t recommend it.)

The point is whether it’s 3000, 30 000, or 3 million, it doesn’t matter if there is no conversation or meaningful engagement happening. 

Let’s make a pact to cut this shit out.

I was in the elevator on my way to a client when my friend Moe asked me “What IS Pinterest?” 

This would be the first of several hundred times I would have to explain what is was.

“That sounds stupid.” was the response. (Later, “Is this PINTEREST?” would become his slam-du-jour.)

Pinterest is a collection/curation tool which has taken the social web by storm recently (the invite-only site has recently become the #3 social network, after Facebook and Twitter. 

So what? Sew buttons! (and making crafts, and doing other things urbanites like to pretend they’re into before they go to their corner bar and get shitfaced.)

Pinterest allows you to upload and “pin” things you like and find while you’re looking up videos of Seahorses giving birth. It has captured the imagination of many users because it’s a visual onslaught of the cute, the handmade, and the aspirational. (It’s the Bloody Caesar of the internet: you see one, you want one.)

Pinterest recently hit critical mass after 3 years in the market. It does one thing extremely well: It taps into humans’ natural urge to show others who they are by publicly declaring the things they like, and showing off their collections.

I like to think of it like how some of us obsess over which photos are tagged with our name on Facebook: you want to show the outside world only the carefully-curated version of you you think you are on your best day.

Once the traffic began to tick up, some brands began to leverage it. (Notably, Martha Stewart, Bergdorf Goodman, and the Travel Channel These brands became heavily followed, repinned, and had great referral traffic back to their sites.

This begat an endless stream of brands jumping into the Pinterest pool feet first. This began the “Pinterest backlash,” and the inevitable “does Pinterest REALLY WORK?” questions. 

Well, what’s the verdict? It’s the same verdict as with all social networks. To butcher a phrase from James Carville, “It’s the content, stupid.”

Pinterest works because of its content-rich brand stories which inspire, and which end users like to aspire to and incorporate into their lives.

No one would pin a 30 dollar chair from WalMart, yet a modernist chair on West Elm’s Pinterest board received 48 likes and 120 plus repins. 

Similarly, if your brand’s promise and story don’t fit into the basic themes of Pinterest, your “Pinterest strategy” (not a strategy, a tactic) will die on the table.

To be likeable and repinnable on Pinterest, you have to offer users something at a glance which they want to experience, build, or live in. (The clue is in the “best of Pinterest” lists, where the boards most re-pinned share the terms “I want this” “I love” “Yummy” “Want to visit”)

The best thing your brand can do when approaching social media is to do an audit of what the most active areas therein share. Who are the most influential people there? What are THEY into? Does that dovetail in any way to your brand?

If the answers to any of these are “no,” you need to speak up, and not press forward on Pinterest.

In the wake of the SOPA/PIPA defeats, everyone seemed to take a typical slackivist approach: “OK, that’s it. We fixed the internet. HIGH FIVES!” (I mean we fixed Uganda, and boob cancer, right?)

If you know anything about the current political climate, you should have been waiting for the other shoe to drop. 

Yes, the esteemed men who you have elected (let’s be real: there are so few females in Congress, it’s ridiculous.) have decided that the internet is a problem that needs to be solved. (I wonder if that was before or after most of their credit cards cleared on “Co-ed Horny House” $19.95 per month.) 

Yes, instead of paying attention for the last TWENTY years as business models got disrupted, the powers that be decided that taking $$ to protect crumbling monopolies is the “way forward” instead of, you know ALLOWING THE FREE MARKET THEY LOVE SO MUCH to propagate online.

Let’s review the latest threat, CISPA:

Under CISPA, the following totally shitty things will be made possible:

• Companies could be commanded to share any of your information with the government without your foreknowledge (Amazon could have to turn over your purchase history. The Wall Street Journal might have to turn over a list of articles you read which relate to “terrorism.”)
• ISPs could, without any provocation or reason, block sites from you which they don’t like (think the Pirate Bay, but also Planned Parenthood, or WIkipedia articles on “controversial” ideas.
• The government could essentially “wiretap” your search history and use that against you.

This is some seriously scary shit, and no one should take it lying down. This is NOT a case where “if you’re not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to be worried about.”

Who determines what’s “wrong?” Is it looking up abortion information? Looking up an article on growing marijuana? Is it looking up a movie on IMDB which the Aryan Brotherhood like to watch? 

The point of the internet today is that in all of these cases, I decide what’s right and what’s wrong FOR ME. You know, because I am an adult who pays taxes and goes to work every day. (Can’t a girl just google “scalp pain” in private?)

Anything sold under the guise of “security” should always be viewed with suspicion. Politicians and Police always want more power and control. It’s the public’s duty to make sure they don’t get it, because our society since 2001 is one who gives away that power much to easily, and never gets it back.

So, dear readers, if you love being able to google weird things, or read more about lifestyles you deem weird, or even just want to know if smoking banana peels was really a thing in the 60s, then you need to do whatever is within your power to stop CISPA. BoingBoing has covered a few solutions here, but the most important one is to GET POLITICALLY ACTIVE.

The phone still works, and so do letters. Get in your elected officials’ faces. Let them know what personal liberties THEY would be giving up (remember, PEOPLE work at the types of organizations which the government would be relying upon to snitch, meaning your Senator could have THEIR search history sent to a local newspaper!)

Don’t stop fighting the good fight. There’s still a GOP Majority, and they are going to keep throwing variations of this at the wall until one of them sticks. KEEP SAYING NO!

MEANWHILE, IN CANADA

I am someone who hates the phone. Yes, I work in technology, and YES I carry the phone with me EVERYWHERE, but that does not mean I enjoy being accessible to fix people’s computers while I’m sitting on a streetcar, or discussing familial matters while I am in line at the deli.

A natural extension of this is that while I do have 10 or 12 custom ringtones on my phone (mostly television theme songs,) I rarely have the ringer turned on. To me, just having the phone on vibrate is plenty.

This is an emerging behaviour. It’s becoming more rare to actually hear a ringtone in public, and when you do, it falls in to 2 camps: older people (nokia default ringtone, anyone?) or youths who are getting the most out of their 2 dollar investment.

What’s more is that ringtones do nothing to address accessibility. Many people with hearing difficulties still use mobile phones, and might not be able to differentiate the sound of their phone easily in a crowd.

Buried in the iOS5 updates is a neat little solution: custom vibration tones. 

Using a very clever interface (you tap the screen to the beat you would like to create), you can create custom ringtones which you can then apply to various alerts. This allows to to know without EVERYONE knowing that one of your friends liked your status on Facebook, or that your mom just texted you to remind you to pick up the pie before you head over there. 

I have a custom vibration tone set up, and it has changed my life (not just because the dog recognises the theme to Portlandia!)  I can turn all of my notifications to vibrate, or silence, so I am only triaging truly important things in my day (work e-mails, and the old family question.) The vibration does not set off that Pavlovian response that a constantl ringing, beeping, and whizzing mobile phone makes.

I would encourage you to give it a try. You could have the same productivity boost, and then no one has to know your shame that you like Flo Rida or Maroon 5.

Instructions for implementing this yourself can be found here.

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Macallan 15

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