Nearly every conference you go to now days has a Social Media Center. You know, the place where they have a the large screen monitor placed up on a wall or stand framed with the logos of every sponsor of the event. On the monitor is a streaming feed of Twitter posts allegedly from people who are talking about the conference. Sometimes there is other more useful information like an email service or message board or even a clever map of the center and where things are happening. The strangest thing you may see now days is a chart showing you what is trending at the conference. A great attempt is made to get the viewer to feel the event is a hopping event.
Influencing the Masses
Some of the same things are going on with all of the news media’s and networks attempt to impress upon their viewers that their news network is totally social media savvy. They try to influence people’s thinking to believe they are popular by showing on air a stream of comments on Twitter on something they see newsworthy. Or, even go as far as to even ask everyone to send them their thoughts and NEWS to their Facebook account?
This type of influencial social media has been popular for awhile now and is a true form of Social Media. However, how much of what you are seeing is real? How many of those people, places and things streaming across the monitors or TV screens, or on their Facebook Page, are Real people like you and me?
There are still a large number of questions being asked on a daily bases by the consumer on what is real and what is contrived hype in the social space. Actually, these questions have been asked for many years. They even go back before social networking came along. Unfortunately, not too many answers have been offered by today’s marketing firms who come up with these type of socially influencing campaigns.
What many marketing firms forget is the consumers today are the children, or grandchildren of people who got burned really bad from scammy and unscrupulous type marketing campaigns. The consumer today is in control of determining what they want and need..and not too much incline to get things they don’t want or need.
Consumers don’t fall for nearly anything anymore and are very demanding of trust which for many marketing firms..and people who offer marketing services…is hard to deal with , espeically when the produce or services are not of the best quality.
Mass Media Appeal
So how are these social media centers, who use these very expensive methods of producing hype on the air, looked at by the consumer…which is YOU and Me? Are all of these elaborate, very expensive, attempts to persuade people, or consumers, into thinking something is popular really working?
I am sure you have stood in front of one of these monitors at an event staring at the endless stream of comments and remarks being made by things called @she/he69 or @titoasswipe. Then you ask yourself..who are these people? Or these people I want to know?
The answer to where these people come from and why they are posting probably come from situations like this….Have you sat in the audience of an event where you were asked to use a Hashtag when posting to Twitter during the event? This is usually tied to a contest for the people using the Hashtag the most in their Tweets to be entered into winning an iPad..or steak dinner…or whatever.
Could this be where the stream of remarks on the monitor at the conference are coming from? Is this really of any value since most of these people entering the Hashtag-a-thon would not use Twitter if it was not for these type of incentives? Does this kind of information influence you to thinking this event is really popular and does that popularity really matter to you?
Damage is Done
There now is a long history of thousands of marketing campaigns strategies being used based on actively hiring hordes of people to fill a Twitter stream or hit the LIKE button on Facebook. Of course this is all an effort to produce an illusion to something or someone being popular. This one activity has built a mistrust amongst consumers towards anything they see on the internet cannot be trusted. So why is it still being used even more today than before?
The answer to why deception still plays a deep part of marketing today has to do with the profit businesses make from creating a false popularity. Granted, there are a large number of businesses who nobody has heard of who could use some marketing. They need marketing to get their name out to the consumers, but is making a false popularity for that business the right thing to do? These businesses should work to gain popularity for the product organically.
Part of the Problem
Many of the programs and software developed to measure influence where developed to appease the C Suites that social media works. This game of creating measurable results took off and has reached near uncontrollable levels. The large firms who’s leaders refuse to get their hands dirty and learn what social networking is all about, love to use the unverifiable stats produced by these measurement programs in their every expensive presentation to their stockholders. This means the consumers are stuck again having all kinds of unverifiable information and figures shoved down their throats as why a product or service is good.
Change is Needed
Brand Marketing still plays a huge part of many marketing campaigns. However, those brands trusted yesterday could lose that trust quickly if they are found to be associated with the popularity contests many marketing firms feel are successful.
How long will it take before these venues will give up on creating an illusion of popularity? It is probably going to take a long time since it is so easy to create these illusions and there are still so many people who like to see their comments and remarks in these streams.
However, until then, if more people were to voice concern to events and businesses with how unnecessary it is to produce an imaginary high level of popularity maybe more of them will get Real.
Reflects Badly on Others
Right now those marketing businesses actions reflect on others who use the internet. These illusions are casting a dark shadow on everything that is produced online and making the businesses who offer quality services and products appear untrustworthy because they use the social spaces to market their businesses.
Why is it so hard for these events and businesses to live with reality? Fear of not being popular is the main reason. Sponsors of events want to be sponsors of an event that is popular is another reason. The more popular something is the more it draws in people and large numbers of people is what sponsors want.
Where Change Will Be Made
The sooner businesses of all types realize the world’s needs and wants have changed the sooner the consumer will be able to trust what they see is real. It boils down to what is good will become popular through word of mouth. What is bad will become unpopular through the same method of marketing. And no form of false popularity towards something bad will work anymore.
People…yes the consumer who rules the economy…will rely on their own Twitter Feed to tell them what is happening…or better yet, now call upon their quality circle of real people in their G+ account to offer up what they know about a product or service. They will not need a stream of unknown people, places and things flashing in front of them all saying how great something is.
Times are changing and marketing campaigns seems to always to be the last to change.
Let me know how I can help.
