I've already fucking used that one

August 3, 2010 4:57 PM

What the fuck, you may be asking yourself, is my social media strategy?

Via Kottke

posted by resiny (61 comments total)

Why the fuck, you're almost definitely asking, should I give a rat's fat ass?
posted by jonmc at 5:02 PM on August 3, 2010 [3 favorites]

If you have a social media strategy, you are an evil person.
posted by DU at 5:03 PM on August 3, 2010 [9 favorites]

1. XXL Helvetica
2. Staid topic but with lots of "Fuck" throughout
3. "single-serving" design aesthetic
4. Profit!!!
posted by stupidsexyFlanders at 5:03 PM on August 3, 2010 [2 favorites]

Heh. Love these sort of generators.
posted by Salvor Hardin at 5:03 PM on August 3, 2010

Get back to the farm, shift some paradigms, revolutionize outside the box.
posted by Rhaomi at 5:04 PM on August 3, 2010 [1 favorite]

As someone who works at a marketing company, this made me laugh and want to kill myself at the same time.
posted by brundlefly at 5:05 PM on August 3, 2010 [30 favorites]

Today marks ten years for me working online.
posted by Samuel Farrow at 5:05 PM on August 3, 2010

My social media strategy mostly involves banning people who have shitty social media strategies.
posted by cortex at 5:07 PM on August 3, 2010 [43 favorites]

I've been refreshing and haven't seen "thought leader" yet! CAN THIS BE LEGIT?
posted by mynameisluka at 5:07 PM on August 3, 2010 [2 favorites]

Spoiler: there are only 21 distinct potential strategies, this is not a random strategy generator.

Good news: Obliques Strategies may confuse or amaze your audience long enough for you to take the money and run.
posted by filthy light thief at 5:07 PM on August 3, 2010 [1 favorite]

Fitter, happier, more productive,
comfortable,
not drinking too much,
regular exercise at the gym
(3 days a week),
getting on better with your associate employee contemporaries
posted by mannequito at 5:07 PM on August 3, 2010 [9 favorites]

Avoid my relatives, link to youtube a lot, block people with social media strategies.

I've already fucking used that one.
posted by shinybaum at 5:08 PM on August 3, 2010 [3 favorites]

And it's actually Arial. Helvetica is their fallback.
posted by cortex at 5:08 PM on August 3, 2010 [1 favorite]

As someone who works at a marketing company, this made me laugh and want to kill myself at the same time.

Me too, friend, me too. I wince every time a client says "Can you get us on Twitter? I hear it's the next big thing."
posted by generichuman at 5:09 PM on August 3, 2010

1) become journalist
2) find other journalists
3) [sorrow pool]
4) drink
posted by bicyclefish at 5:11 PM on August 3, 2010 [2 favorites]

Follow everyone on twitter who uses a keyword even tangentially related to my area of business
posted by 0xFCAF at 5:12 PM on August 3, 2010

And here I was thinking that you were referring to Social Media Marketing for Dummies, which was released as a free PDF today as part of a Dell/Intel promo (so the usual signup BS applies).
posted by Bora Horza Gobuchul at 5:14 PM on August 3, 2010

Follow everyone on twitter who uses a keyword even tangentially related to my area of business

Hi, Zero 64687.

Arriana (TangentArcSEO) is now following your tweets on Twitter.
posted by cortex at 5:14 PM on August 3, 2010

I wonder when advertisers will realize that people like hanging out where they aren't.
posted by rouftop at 5:16 PM on August 3, 2010 [14 favorites]

Whatever you come up with, I recommend you position it to impact markets on a go-forward basis. Really, you shouldn't do anything if it's not on a go-forward basis.
posted by gompa at 5:19 PM on August 3, 2010 [6 favorites]

@cortex Have you seen new follow? http://bit.ly/3M2jVh #bananaphone #kanye
posted by 0xFCAF at 5:20 PM on August 3, 2010

jonmc: “Why the fuck, you're almost definitely asking, should I give a rat's fat ass?”

No – you don't get it, jonmc. There are those of us who are actually asked this question. A handy generator of nonsense like this is quite useful, and saves precious brain cells which one would prefer to waste on alcohol than thinking up inane phrases to please idiots in suits.
posted by koeselitz at 5:21 PM on August 3, 2010 [3 favorites]

I think my jokes are funnier: Social Media Moneky and on twitter: @SMmonkey (Self-links obviously.) I was having a grand old time with this until I got sick. Now that I am mostly better I can't quite tap into it the way I was and I have other things that seem more important than making fun of these people, but occasionally I get inspired.
posted by cjorgensen at 5:37 PM on August 3, 2010 [2 favorites]

My friend is married to a guy who tweets like this. Without irony. He is a loving partner, a wonderful husband, and totally insufferable.
posted by foxy_hedgehog at 5:41 PM on August 3, 2010 [2 favorites]

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh ahhhhhhhhhhhhh watch me run screaming from the room. Flashing back...cloudy edges of the frame in 5,4,3,2...

When I worked in the nonprofit sector, I ended up with a catchphrase: "But what does that actually mean?" What the shit do you mean by "dynamic" other than "really cool, I promise"?

Then I got a degree in Digital Rhetoric. So uh that didn't really help anything (well, I learned PHP and historiography and a bunch of stuff and had a good time, but it didn't get me away from the internet jargon brigade amirite).

Now I go with the flow and balance "do you know what words mean???" rages with stringing buzzwords together in ways that sound pleasant, albeit to a different audience.
posted by Tesseractive at 5:48 PM on August 3, 2010

To be fair, there are small businesses that can use a social media strategy in non-evil ways. For instance, a local yarn store having a presence on Ravelry and Facebook, blogging and tweeting about new inventory to people who actually might be interested. Sure, big corporations will always be faceless, which is just creepy over social media. But mom and pop stores really can use social networking in positive and creative ways. (But it's always easier to snark.)
posted by rikschell at 5:58 PM on August 3, 2010 [4 favorites]

It works better if you cut it up.

ie: Maximise the customer experience, driving engagement and bringing the brand alive

becomes: brand the driving experience bringing the customer engagement alive and Maximise
posted by philip-random at 6:01 PM on August 3, 2010

If you have a social media strategy, you are an evil person
This drivel demeans both the concept of "evil" and "snark". Some very non-evil results have come about because groups that have trouble getting messages out to mainstream media, especially activists and charities, formulated and implemented a social media strategy.

(doesn't stop this page being funny as fuck tho)
posted by bonaldi at 6:03 PM on August 3, 2010 [3 favorites]

Spoiler: there are only 21 distinct potential strategies, this is not a random strategy generator.

What the heck?! How could they not make this a random generator?! This is the ideal pasture for a random generator - phrases that are only mildly grammatical and completely devoid of meaning. Someone's gotta hit that.
posted by Salvor Hardin at 6:06 PM on August 3, 2010

Here's something for you.

In 2006, right before "social media" became mainstream, I was hired by my company to build the social media strategy, based on my online journalism and my focus on new media in journalism.

I had a damn good track record. I met the business goals, and ended up getting an innocent woman out of jail in the process. We had compliments from peers and from tech journalists alike.

You want to know how I did it?

I wrote stuff the people who would be interested in buying our products would also be interested in reading. That's it. That's the secret sauce. Create content people will want to read, and tell people about it. Listen to the customers when they talk, and when they're not talking, give them something interesting to talk about. You don't need to "leverage" or "engage" or couch all this in some sort of crazy marketing bull, to make it seem like these are specialist skills that only experienced PR people and specialized marketing firms can do. You want to know the real "specialist skill"? It doesn't come with an MBA. It comes with being a good writer.

The biggest problem with being a social media expert is that they stopped letting the geeks come into marketing with their ideas and now the "marketing people" have crowded the geeks with ideas out by flooding the entire industry with buzzwords and trying to confuse the market.

So now, in 2010, I'm looking for work based on a bad decision I made. (I followed my dreams over a cliff - long story) and every job for "Social Media Marketing" or "New Media Communication" reads like this stupid generator. I *need* a job now, but I'm pessimistic enough to think that I might have to start thinking about changing careers in the long term.
posted by BrianBoyko at 6:07 PM on August 3, 2010 [10 favorites]

Hmm, it seems I made a tagline.

Metafilter: Only mildly grammatical and completely devoid of meaning.
posted by Salvor Hardin at 6:07 PM on August 3, 2010

I think I've said a few of these things in earnest at work.
posted by slogger at 6:07 PM on August 3, 2010

I always think this shit is funny.
posted by ph00dz at 6:23 PM on August 3, 2010

"Social Media" is nothing but a buzzword.

A buzzword that begat a thousand other buzzwords.

So, PLEASE, have your buzzwords spayed or neutered.
posted by oneswellfoop at 6:23 PM on August 3, 2010 [1 favorite]

In 10 years they will be calling Social Media Marketing "Marketing." It will be just like e-commerce.
posted by cjorgensen at 6:35 PM on August 3, 2010

This is dumb, but the Facebook link at the bottom redeems it.
posted by swift at 6:52 PM on August 3, 2010

I prefer the ye olde Web Economy Bullshit Generator.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 7:15 PM on August 3, 2010 [2 favorites]

I copped DU's comment for the monkey. He said I could.
posted by cjorgensen at 7:20 PM on August 3, 2010

Aaaaaaaaaaah. I was in a training on "social media" this weekend that was waaaay too much like this.

So I tweeted about it on facebook. Am I doing this right?
posted by gingerbeer at 8:10 PM on August 3, 2010

Follow everyone on twitter who uses a keyword even tangentially related to my area of business

Apparently, any keyword is relevant to prostitutes, going by my Twitterspam.
posted by emjaybee at 8:43 PM on August 3, 2010

My biggest problem w/ social media has been trying to drag a nonprofit I was involved with into it, because their supporter base has a pretty huge Twitter/FB presence. And I convinced them to let me set them up...but then they wouldn't send me content or updates. Sometimes they'd update their blog, but not tell me (or anyone on the mailing list) about it. And when they did email "blasts" (jesus I hate those) they'd be just fundraising. I begged, I pleaded, nothin'. They did not like this newfangled social media thing.

Meanwhile, a competing nonprofit got how to use their media--by making it more personal and letting younger staff tweet links they thought were interesting, or "hey, we're gonna be in Senator X's office today!" etc. Lots of their followers had never gone to their Web sites, but know who they are and trust them as advocates/information sources.

So in short, it doesn't matter if you have social media accounts if the old people in your firm refuse to let you do anything interesting with them. Which is why most of them are exercises in futility.
posted by emjaybee at 8:50 PM on August 3, 2010 [1 favorite]

This reminds me of all the times I have heard marketing people talk about "social media."

I listen to what they say, and it sounds like they have no idea what they are talking about. Then I look at the manifestation of all the gobbeldygook, the content, and it becomes embarrassingly clear that they have no fucking clue.

Then I feel sad for them.

Then I think about how much they probably got paid.

Then I feel sad for me.


Then I update my status and look at videos of kittens.

KITTENS
posted by louche mustachio at 9:01 PM on August 3, 2010 [4 favorites]

Gah. He's cute, funny, and has fantastic teeth. And, best piss take on social media strategy.

[I seriously swoon]

I also have always had a thing for guys named Mike. And, people with pronoun problems and/or an identity crisis:

In his spare time I still potter around with websites, blogs, twitter and all that stuff. In the rare moments he’s not online I like to eat pudding and watch old sci fi and zombie films. He’s pretty much just a typical geek.

posted by iamkimiam at 9:35 PM on August 3, 2010

I believe the first AskMe question I answered was "How do I know when to fire my social media strategist?" and my answer was "it's just is."
posted by Astro Zombie at 9:37 PM on August 3, 2010

"it just is," rather.
posted by Astro Zombie at 9:37 PM on August 3, 2010

Nice fucking styles in that page:
<style type="text/css">
#fuckingwrapper {min-height:100%; position:relative; }
#fuckingheader {padding-bottom: 5px; padding-top: 20px}
#fuckingmessage {padding-bottom:70px; }
#fuckingfooter {height:70px; position:absolute; bottom:0; right: 0; width:100%; text-align:right;}
#bigfuckingtext {font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; color:#666666; font-size: 70px;}
.notsobigfuckingtext {color:#666666; font-size: 25px;}
<!--[if IE 6]>
#fuckingwrapper {height:100%; }
<![endif]-->
</style>
posted by fartknocker at 9:39 PM on August 3, 2010 [6 favorites]

I love the ideas that these marketers talk about almost as much as I hate the marketers that talk about them. I also find it hilarious that marketers of all people can't look around at themselves and say, "Guys, we're talking a load of horseshit, and people are noticing; can't we, you know, stop talking horseshit?"

Here's what people mean when they say social media: "People talking about shit."

When they talk about leveraging social media through existing paradigms, they mean, "Let's find people who like to talk about shit and make them talk about our shit."

So, when Old Spice does their 300 videos in two days, they're making people talk about their shit. And in theory this is better than them putting ads up telling you to buy them, because here they're not going out of their way to pester you. You'll only find it if your friend is like, "Dude, check this neat shit out."

In theory this is Good And Maybe Breakthrough Marketing. Because it relies on virality (read: "people listening to each other and not their TV set") to spread flexibly ("lots of people talking in different ways instead of them just seeing one ad one time"), and therefore doesn't have to be quite as pernicious (though there's "fuckhole viral marketing", where instead of generating an actual conversation you just stage some shitty drama and then afterwards go "SURPRISE THIS WAS ALL FOR PRODUCTNAMEHERE"). The idea that marketing is as easy as doing things so cool that people talk about them is much better than the idea that marketing is saying your name fifteen thousand times until people are sick to death of you but they remember your name.

There are a lot of people who are very good at this who you don't think of as advertisers because they're literally just being human beings talking to you. "Existing paradigms" means things like, people often talk to each other on Twitter, so let's talk to people on Twitter! They post photos on Flickr so let's do that also! Usually this is a natural thing ("Hey I want to talk; where can I go to talk?"), but lots of marketers, the dumbasses, have decided to reduce this to textbook connecting-dots, and in the process totally ruined things.

Which I think is really funny because, seriously, this could not be simpler. Once you figure out who you want to sell for, you go and make things for that person that they'll like, either by making a cool product or by making other cool things that'll get them to look for your product. And then once you find them you talk to them! And respect them! All that jazz! It's really easy and it actually works. Because the best way to sell something to somebody is to make something that they'll like! The product markets itself! You can pretty easily replicate this over and over and over and over again.

When I had a Twitter I really enjoyed looking at all the New Social Media people who started following me because for a month or two it looked like I was going to say Intelligent Things about social media. Their dialogue was so obviously artificial. It was almost political in nature. And I kept thinking, no wonder you're failing at this, you're doing exactly the opposite of what the rest of us are telling you to do. We told you not to be a fuckass. You're being a fuckass. Stop it.
posted by Rory Marinich at 9:52 PM on August 3, 2010 [14 favorites]

10 years on this is still available
posted by the noob at 12:10 AM on August 4, 2010 [1 favorite]

this is well fucking futile.
posted by 6am at 12:22 AM on August 4, 2010

Zing.

Zing
Zing.

Zing zing zing.
ZingZingZingZingZingZingZing
ZingZingZingZingZingZingZing
ZING!
posted by Devils Rancher at 6:13 AM on August 4, 2010

your favourite social media strategy sucks
posted by the_very_hungry_caterpillar at 6:56 AM on August 4, 2010

wow Rory - that's a lot of hating, and a really low-quality diatribe to boot. Hey, you hate marketing - cool (and very trendy). And you probably think you are not affected by it - wrong.
posted by the_very_hungry_caterpillar at 7:05 AM on August 4, 2010 [1 favorite]

When I worked in the nonprofit sector, I ended up with a catchphrase: "But what does that actually mean?" What the shit do you mean by "dynamic" other than "really cool, I promise"?

I have finally figured out what this means. It means: "Something I can't really explain clearly to any of our in-house technical people or any outside companies we've used before, but which this other company I've found that just happens to be run by my spouse, friend, or former classmate understands perfectly well already, so we have no choice but to hire them at great cost to do this work, and at the end you'll see what they did and realize we could have done this ourselves in a couple of days."

Nobody has actually sat down and defined words like "dynamic" for me this way, but I think I have it about right based on observing the results every time such words get used.
posted by FishBike at 7:32 AM on August 4, 2010 [1 favorite]

Caterpillar, you're worse at reading comprehension than social marketers are at socially marketing. I state in my first sentence that I love these marketing techniques — partly I posted in defense of social marketing. But I can love the practice while thinking the marketers are fuckasses.

(For the record, I do marketing work, and I've used stuff like this to launch sites and projects with pretty nifty success stories. But I do it without using bullshit phrases. I go "Hey look at this cool thing" and if it's cool people look. What I dislike is not marketing. It's people so thick they take a simple, benevolent strategy and turn it into a malicious heap of bullshit catchphrases. )
posted by Rory Marinich at 8:28 AM on August 4, 2010

I just got an email reminding me that my invite to some social media bullshit site from a guy who I'd already banned from mefi was about to expire. A guy to whom I had later had to write to to ask to get me the fuck off his social media buddy list because he was a goddam spammer. Those things happened before he ever spammed me onto the invite list for this particular social media bullshit site.

It was very dynamic.
posted by cortex at 8:40 AM on August 4, 2010 [3 favorites]

@noob @Monju - That link is wonderful. Thank you both.
posted by smistephen at 9:02 AM on August 4, 2010

Excuse me, but "social media" and "paradigm"? Aren't those just buzzwords that dumb people use to sound important?

Not that I'm accusing any of you of anything like that...

I'm fired aren't I?
posted by jquinby at 9:28 AM on August 4, 2010

This is so Web 3.0.
posted by benzenedream at 10:21 AM on August 4, 2010

When I worked in the nonprofit sector, I ended up with a catchphrase: "But what does that actually mean?"

Yeah, the nonprofit I'm currently with has given out some grants in the last few years to large (and idiotic) nonprofit orgs who have websites filled with this kind of incomprehensible shit. For at least one of them, I still do not understand what it is that they actually do. Their corporate strategies might as well be embodied by a hyperactive toddler shouting words at random.
posted by elizardbits at 11:44 AM on August 4, 2010 [1 favorite]

When they talk about leveraging social media through existing paradigms, they mean, "Let's find people who like to talk about shit and make them talk about our shit."

no shit
posted by the noob at 9:29 PM on August 4, 2010 [1 favorite]

Many of these comments are very cynical based on the fact that this site is one of the ultimate social media sites.

Yes, this is an elite group that know how to really use social. But, because we were the vanguard does not mean we can hate our followers. Enough with the comment, and down to the feedback.

Full disclosure, I do social media strategy at Cisco. That being said, I always start at the people aspects. Who is your target audience(s)? Where are they (online)? What are there online habits and preferences?

This can be a large project on it's own. Next, you need to understand the business. What is your value proposition? What are the short/long term objectives/goals? We are not thinking technologies yet...

Now, what can you do to reach the core objectives keeping in mind who your audience is? In MBA speak, what is your strategy for meeting your objectives?

Almost at the end.

How will you execute your strategies with your goals in mind, always understanding your audience. Be ware that your audience is ever changing and you need a plan for measuring thins.

Now finally, how do you know what works. The the funny thing about this step is that you do this at the same time you do the execute step. Do NOT create execution plans that can not have success measurements. How will you know what tactics/strategies/objectives/audiences are working?

Longest comment ever, but you asked for it.
posted by ctreadwell at 9:09 PM on August 28, 2010