Has social media become like karaoke with billions of 24×7 always-on karaoke singers and wanna be karaoke stars posting and tweeting…with nobody in the audience listening to all their posts, status updates and tweets?
Everyone wants a microphone and followers. And the most popular sites online (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn) are all so popular because they enable anyone to share whatever they want with whoever their “followers” may be for free.
Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn are huge karaoke stages…
Who is reading all these tweets and posts on Facebook and LinkedIn? In the old days (a year ago in Internet time), people actually responded to tweets and made comments to posts on Facebook. A friend who was a Twitter early-adopter said to me yesterday on the phone, “Twitter’s become like the classified ads with people just posting and leaving a link to something they want their followers to look at.” And then when you do (finally) go visit your Twitter account it feels like your junk email box with hundreds or thousands of tweets that you don’t have time or interest to read because you’re there to send a tweet, not read tweets.
Six months ago people actually took the time to visit Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn to make a relevant post. Now so many of the social media butterflies use “dashboards” that automatically make the same post to all these venues. That’s like lip syncing on the social media karaoke stage. I see posts on LinkedIn and Facebook that people have posted on Twitter with hashmarks and Twitterisms that aren’t appropriate on Facebook and LinkedIn status updates. Someone doesn’t even have five minutes to post their comment and link to make it relevant to the karaoke stage they’re on? Oh my!
All this posting and tweeting is like singing a song at an empty karaoke bar and then dashing to the next karaoke bar to sing again.
Guilty. We write a blog post or article and we do the things you are supposed to do for social media marketing: post a tweet with a link, a Facebook post with a link, a LinkedIn status update with a link. And then we look at Google Analytics to see if anyone actually took the time to click to see the article or blog post…and then if they just bounced away or chose to click in to spend some “quality time” reading other valuable articles on the site.
This seems to have become the “new reality” for marketing. So much time spent on social media marketing trying to gain an audience and some followers.
INSIGHTS:
1. It seems to me that when someone actually wants to spend money, they pick up the phone and call you. Or, if they’re thinking about spending money, they send a text message or email to set up an appointment to actually talk to you or get a specific answer to their specific question.
2. The best sales people spend their time on the phone or meeting with people in person.
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Maybe marketing should be more like sales and stop all this narcissistic nonsense of singing karaoke to people who aren’t listening?
- How can we help sales people get face time or talk time with real customers and prospects? How can we help attract qualified leads?
- Maybe the real benefit of all these tweets and posts is mining that to find people who are interested in what you’re selling?
Hey, if you’re out there actually reading this post, will you engage and leave a comment that isn’t spam?
“We’re going through a phase” (when were we not?). I think we will develop overlay technologies to help noise-reduce the system–google+ circles are a simple example, spam filters a more complex one. The blah-blah will be present but filtered, so yes, we still will be singing karaoke to an empty house, but next door there will be real music and real listeners. Think, in particular, of how social media has revolutionized the marketing of indy music.
You’re always looking ahead Geoff. Love your extension of this karaoke analogy! I always learn something from you.
In the 1980′s I had the first “car phone” in my neighborhood mounted in the car. (Remember when we called them car phones and had cool antennas?) After awhile they weren’t a differentiator, just functional tools (cell phones) that everyone now has and uses. Social media as karaoke is a modern truth – and while ubiquitous, it will evolve to true functional benefits in sales and marketing. And yes, good selling is communicating live on phones and in person, but quality and targeted use of social media can score exposure points. A wise karaoke singer sells impressions, not records.
More than a year ago I started telling clients that Twitter was really a place where self-employed consultants and consultant wanna-be’s were talking to each other. I still fell that is true, but I have seen some legit uses of the channel and am using it personally to help keep the word out about my new book. I have found that SproutSocial makes it sooo much easier to manage all of my social activity. Awesome app.
The most important thing I can say on this subject is that each company has to find out what its customers are doing with social media, and how it factors into their expectations for that type of company, and their buying process when seeking that company’s types of products. The mistake I see everyone making – over and over – is to try to imitate what other companies are doing. Total waste of money and time. NO two companies are alike – in terms of what they sell, how they sell it, how they service it, how the company is managed, how the people behave, etc. – and most importantly, how the company and its products are perceived by real, live customers. The same customers who encourage others to buy from that company or warn them to stay away.
This is why I teach people how to find out fast and easily what their customers are perceiving and deciding. Once you have that information, it’s like your own personal revenue recipe. All the chaos falls away, and your path is very clear.
Kristin
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