Lani, good point in comparing to the telephone. Even TIME Magazine went so far as to say “Twitter will change the way we live” on its cover this summer. And I think the people worth their salt in marketing and social media know that, when it comes to Twitter as a tool for our efforts, it’s just that: A TOOL. It happens to work very well for some business efforts right now, but the real “stickiness” of it is not Twitter itself, but the fact that technology has caught up with our real-time, everywhere-at-once culture. Just like Todd Defren talks about at PR-Squared today, it shouldn’t be all about the shiny new toy.

Mike, I can certainly understand your particular frustrations with it. Especially being where you are geographically, you and Deep Bench were way ahead of the game. Even in Austin it’s been hard for us, since we were telling our clients over a year ago, “You need to be looking at this, here’s a strategy outline we’ve put together for you” — and they just didn’t get the importance of it. Then flash forward 8 months later and we get emails saying “I keep hearing about this Twitter thing and how important it is. Why aren’t we doing it?” (face to palm) Now, it certainly is frustrating that there are so many later adopters that seem to be jumping on the wagon simply because it is “so hot right now” and not because they know the long-term importance of it and have developed a strategic plan instead of just diving in and shouting canned messages at large “audiences” instead of engaging with relevant people like a human.

Thanks for your feedback!

The reason I cringe when I hear all this talk about social media now is because, being somewhat on the forefront of SM here in Sioux Falls, we had been encouraging clients to incorporate those tools into their marketing/PR strategies long before “Oprah was on Twitter.” At that time, it was nearly impossible to convince business owners and other clients that social media had value.

Unfortunately, since this transition period you’re talking about has taken place, it seems that everybody in this region (and the country in general) “does” social media. This means that they set up a Twitter account and tell clients to “tweet about stuff.” And these are clients to whom, a year ago, we had pitched entire strategies and plans so they could effectively get value from social media (not just “do Twitter”). Of course, back then Oprah and Ashton Kutcher weren’t tweeting and nobody but marketing/PR people and open-minded organizations/companies knew what it was.

So…to sum up this rant, what makes me cringe is that we see awful examples of people using the tools of social media rather than building out a well-rounded and purposeful overall strategy that happens to incorporate the appropriate tools. Social media as a buzzword/trend type of thing just means bad decisions can be made even more visible when it really doesn’t have to be that way.

A bad use of tools rather than a strong strategy is what makes me cringe. Hopefully any/all of that was coherent. If not, people can tweet to their networks that I’m a total idiot. @mikebilleter if you want to make sure you spell it right.

Great post, Valerie!

THAT SAID, I’m sure the world felt this way when the phone came out. “Have you heard about the telephone?” “Ah yes, you can ring me at #34 and my mother can be ringed by dialing #10.” It takes the entire globe adopting and taking a technology for granted that talk of the shiny new toy ceases.

It’s become too much of a self-referential echo chamber, too meta, too something–we’ll move on at some point (hopefully very soon) as we start tackling the next big thing — what is it all *good for*?

Exactly the words I was looking for, Tom! I’m sure this is a controversial topic, too, as so many people take pride in being at the bleeding edge of this movement. It just seems that sometimes it’s too much, too often.

Hmmm, to me, the social media topic chatter on social media makes about as much sense as the constant journalismism you see about the demise of newspapers (as newspaper headlines), or about as much sense as watching a bunch of movies about how to make movies.

It’s become too much of a self-referential echo chamber, too meta, too something–we’ll move on at some point (hopefully very soon) as we start tackling the next big thing — what is it all *good for*?

Can you get more business/sales/leads/whatever on SM? Okay, great–show me. And don’t be a generalist about it, tell me how I, a blah blah consultant in the foobar vertical industry, can make money.

Can I make more friends, meet new people, yada yada? Great, show me. Okay, I can meet new people but it’s not good for dating? Okay, great.

I think that’s starting to emerge. But yeah, I agree, too much social media in social media.