Social Marketing Annoying

I miss the good old days when a Twitter follow notice was from a person. Now, it seems everyone is a professional whatever, consultant in whoknowsit, and designer and entrepreneur in almost everything imaginable.

What’s with the follow-back fad? I follow people because I like their Tweets.

Marketing through social blogs and media wastes money. It’s the new telemarketing.

People don’t follow you because you merely because you follow them—that doesn’t make sense from a leadership perspective or a tweetership perspective.

People are interested in your Twitter account because they are interested in your company, not interested in your company merely because you have a Twitter account.

People get interested in your company because they heard about your company over lunch with a friend or because they saw your Tweet get retweeted by their friends. So, a social presence on Twitter doesn’t mean that you follow a thousand people who don’t know you, but that they retweet you.  · · · →

Big Blogging Brother

Yes, it’s coming! Newspapers will want bloggers to “obey” the rules of the road. I finally read about this at the New York Times. Here’s the issue in a nutshell as I explained it to Congressman Dave Camp:

An issue is stirring among the blogosphere and Newspapers about intellectual property and plagiary. Newspapers are thinking about getting organized to bring standards that bloggers may need to comply with. There are MANY sides to this discussion.

Here is a hypothetical story:

John Doe has a simple website and wants people to read it. So, he sees an article at the Chicago Tribune website. It’s about the same topic his website fans are interested in. He copies and pastes article into his own website, so it looks like his work, but it’s not. He doesn’t see anything wrong with this and the Chicago Tribune may not be entirely angry.

Because Chicago Tribune readers read the paper newspaper at home, not so much online, JohnDoe.com’s

 · · · →

Media

More and more Christians are becoming interested in the world of publishing, syndication, writing, and art. Mass Communication is entirely different from the Academic world. Medical, Theology, and Education tend to respect people for their academic degrees. However, authors, artists, entertainers, syndicates, cartoonists—advancement in these careers depend more on whether you “got it” or not. For them, your pedigree doesn’t matter, only your work and your relationships in the industry. You don’t achieve these things without dedication.

Authors and artists may want to emphasize their portfolios. As an opinion writer, if you get published by a large company or syndicated, you’re regarded as an expert, regardless of your school transcripts. As a pundit, you may need to get along well with other pundits, while taking pot shots at them just the same. Facebook, blogosphere, tweetosphere—Social Media is similar to Mass Media: Notice to get noticed. Some news organizations promote within their ranks based on cronyism, but not all.   · · · →