{grow} » This is why you’re a social media loser

Jul 29 2010

This is why you’re a social media loser

I’m pleased to offer this entertaining guest post from {grow} community member John White, a marketing communications writer for technology companies. I think you’re going to love this romp from John’s offbeat and creative mind!

This week, I phoned my neighbor and favorite instructional designer, Gail Dana, to tell her about yet another social media presentation (YASMP) I’d seen advertised.

“Gail, do you get social media?” I asked her, italicizing the verb.

“Sort of,” she replied, “but I think it’s worthless. Or at least, I hope it is.”

“I know what you mean. A lot of us don’t know quite what to do with it. Anyway, wanna go listen to another young person try to explain it to us?”

Gail was up for that, so we drove across town to attend Melodie Tao’s presentation here in San Diego, “Social Media Design Techniques to Engage your Customer.”

Melodie gave a breathlessly energetic performance describing Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and even Foursquare, outlining design ideas for your presence in social media. She described using social tools to enhance traveling, studying, spending time with friends, and accomplishing work tasks. I figured I must have done a lot of the same things at her age, but without recourse to social media. In fact, I traveled the world for four years and made only two phone calls home in all that time (one was a wrong number because my parents had moved).

It got me thinking about my blogs and my newsletter and my LinkedIn profile and the time I spend wrapped around the Twitter axle when suddenly I had …

My Social Media Epiphany

I figured out why my social media efforts include so much head-scratching after all this time: I’m in Category 4!

While Melodie paused for a hurried gulp of water during her speech, I managed to wrap my brain around the factors that go into social media winning and losing. Four categories occurred to me in the space of about 2.5 seconds, and whenever I can think that fast, I’m usually right.

Category 1: The Natural Networkers. We all know people like this, people with a seemingly boundless circle of friends. Attracting and retaining this circle is second nature to them. They don’t even call it “interaction;” it’s just what happens when they’re awake. They’re drawn to polls, giveaways, contests, coupons, comments and retweeting in their offline life, so doing it in a browser or on a phone provides an extra channel of exhilaration.

Social media is an online extension of their innate ability to connect to and build relationships with other people.

Category 2: The Geeks. Not strictly geeks, but left-brain, analytical personalities who see the patterns in keywords, practice SEO copywriting to apply them and understand the science behind building an audience and moving it from one point of engagement to the next. The tools of social media resonate with and challenge them. They figure out how to make money using these tools to build and distribute the right content.

Social media is an online extension of their innate ability to figure out how the lawn mower works, then turn it into a mini-bike, then a go-cart, then a fishing boat. (And get us to pay a nickel to ride along.)

Category 3: The Hemingways. These people are the ultimate raconteurs. It doesn’t matter what we’re doing online; if we stumble onto something they’ve written, we drop everything and read it. They write crisply, then infuse their writing with the story of their own interesting life, they make us stop and think and actually click on the link to the story they refer to. They write the posts that make the young girls cry… They don’t need SEO techniques; people retweet and forward their stuff because it’s just such damned valuable content.

Social media is an online extension of their innate ability to tell a story that resonates with us, the kind nobody interrupts with, “Yeah, well that’s just like the time I…”

Adrift in the Long Tail …

Now, if you’re fortunate enough to live in more than one of the preceding categories, you knock the cover off the ball. Long may you run. But let’s not forget the rest of us in …

Category 4: Social Media Purgatory. We start a blog, stick with it, and do as much as we can to promote it, considering we’re not in the other three categories. We have a Facebook and LinkedIn profile, we tweet from time to time, we have between a few dozen and a few hundred followers, and we’re adrift in the long tail. We read the advice and attend the webinars of people in the other three categories. We see how people turn tweets into interaction, and interaction into relationships, and some relationships into a career, but it’s a long way off for us, and besides, we have our day job.

Social media is an online extension of our innate ability to lean out on the carousel and reach for the brass ring. We don’t quite grab it, but we congratulate ourselves for staying on the painted pony and trying hard.

Of course, it’s entirely up to us to spend the rest of this life (and maybe a couple more) in social-media purgatory. But social media and its tools will nudge some of us out of Category 4 and into one of the other categories, in the same way that the Harry Potter series inspired hardened non-readers to get through 3400 pages, or that Microsoft PowerPoint has instilled in timid people the nerve to present in front of an audience.

So, on the way home from Melodie’s presentation I bounced my newly found taxonomy off of Gail. In doing so, I recalled a line uttered by the hapless Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby, scratching his head at the difficulty that rich people find in connecting to one another:

“There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired.”

Pick whichever set of categories makes the most sense to you, and stop being a social media loser.

John White of venTAJA Marketing posts about technology writing from the perspective of the marketing manager. It’s dirty work, but somebody has to do it. He also publishes a newsletter with more tips on working with your writers.

Illustration: Photobucket

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Filed in humor, personal branding | Mark

25 Comments

By Brad Lovett, July 29, 2010 @ 10:07 am

My first thought was “uh-oh”. Lot of work to do to get out of 4 and at least to 1. Great post!
By Jim LeBlanc, July 29, 2010 @ 10:10 am

I am the Mayor of Category 4.
By Elyse DeVries, July 29, 2010 @ 10:17 am

John,

Great post! Love the Gatsby quote at the end; who would of thought we could tie The Great Gatsby to social media personas? Ha!

I think you are in good company in Category 4, there are plenty of folks participating in social media that don’t even make it that far – so I wouldn’t feel too bad about hanging out in SM Purgatory.

Mark – thanks for exposing us to another talented Marketer.
By Howie at Sky Pulse Media, July 29, 2010 @ 10:18 am

Very well said! I think it comes down to value. I was a late bloomer to owning a cell phone. I did not want to be available anytime to anyone. Then I got a sales job. It’s usefulness eventually made it indespensible, and of course no one has to answer their phone when they don’t want too.

So I think Social Media has different value to different people and it takes unlocking the specific aspects of the technology in ways that excite you, to bring you out of purgatory. The problem is the Social Media Guru’s who have a $$ stake in all the success will tell people they have to do everything..its a must. When that is far from reality.
By John White, July 29, 2010 @ 12:36 pm

@Brad: Heck, come up with your own new category. Don’t limit yourself to the 4 that I know about.

@Jim: Fair enough. Can I be the Power Behind the Throne?

@Elyse: Imagine my luck at having my social media epiphany (SME, for those of us in the trade) while my son was reading Gatsby. He recalled the quote and pointed me to it.

@Howie: “specific aspects of the technology,” yes – but the “excite you” part is more important.
By Frank Podlaha, July 29, 2010 @ 2:09 pm

I just used Foursquare to check into Category 2. Boy, there are alot geeks here.
By Jenn Whinnem, July 29, 2010 @ 2:24 pm

John, I love your writing style. I laughed aloud at my desk.

But I’m still going to decline to identify my category.
By Jon Buscall, July 29, 2010 @ 2:47 pm

John, What a great post. Loved the Gatsby quote. I immediately rushed over to check your blog out too. What gems.

Thanks for sharing a new voice on Grow, Mark.
By John White, July 29, 2010 @ 3:29 pm

@Frank: Yes, but they’re Our Kind of Geeks. Keep up that Social Media Supremacy.

@Jenn: I think you’re Cat 1, but I respect your privilege to decline to state. Hope your laughter helped the dental pain.

@Jon: I think the Gatsby quote is eerily close to what’s happening in social media; glad you liked it. Happy 6th anniversary!
By Billy Mitchell, July 29, 2010 @ 3:39 pm

Just judging from this post, I would have placed you in the Hemingway group. You just can’t hide the fact you’re a great writer and wit when you craft a fine piece of work like this. Thanks!
By John White, July 29, 2010 @ 3:50 pm

@Billy: For once it was 98% inspiration and 2% perspiration. Wish I could do it all the time, but even Papa Hem couldn’t master that.
By Brenna DeLeo, July 29, 2010 @ 4:42 pm

Great categorization of those who use Twitter for personal reasons. What about those who use it to grow their business and communicate with customers, rather than personal use. Would they start as a parent category of sorts then fall into one of these sub categories based on the manager’s/company’s personality? Or would their be an additional category all together to encompass this business centric group of socializers?
By John White, July 29, 2010 @ 5:02 pm

@Brenna: Actually, I had in mind sole-props and small shops trying to grow their business. I think that one’s ability to use social media effectively in business depends on whether one is a networker, geek, Hemingway or purgator(?).

I like your idea for another category; take it for a ride and build on my list for your next Pyxl post.
By Karen Marchetti, July 29, 2010 @ 10:58 pm

Thanks for the entertaining post, John. Also telling that no one else mentioned your Barry Manilow lyrics . . . How about Category 4A: Smart-and-over-40- marketers-trying-to-make-sense-of-the-current-marketing-universe-as-best-we-can.
By Emilio Park, July 29, 2010 @ 11:07 pm

Does Cat4 have anything to do with age? I’m dabbling but I just don’t get it… my brain tells me I should but it can’t tell me why. Until I find out the “why” for myself I don’t think I will ever get out of Cat4.

Good to know there are others out there like me.
By Mark, July 29, 2010 @ 11:17 pm

Just wanted to thank John White for such a great day on {grow} and also thank our community for joining in the fun. I just thought this was a brilliant post. Great job.
By John White, July 29, 2010 @ 11:45 pm

@Karen: It scares me to read your comment because everything I know about marketing I learned from you. I’ve long suspected that you really learned it all from Barry Manilow, and now I have my proof.

@Emilio: Just keep doing work as slick as what’s on your Website and it won’t matter whether you get it. Very nice stuff there.

@Mark: I’m glad you enjoyed it, and gratified (encouraged?) by your and your community’s comments. Hope to be back soon with more of the same.
By Laura Click, July 30, 2010 @ 10:02 am

Great post! I think the categories are spot on. I think I’m in category 1, but I’d really like to be in #3. A girl can dream, right??
By Marcella Chamorro, July 30, 2010 @ 12:20 pm

Thanks for this, John. Great insight and really enjoyable read.
By John White, July 30, 2010 @ 2:36 pm

@Laura: Cat1 is good. Frankly, they’re all enviable – even Cat4 – but you’re right: a girl can dream. So can a guy.

@Marcella: Thanks. I like the titles and images on your site.