Let them eat < social media> cake

« Let them eat cake! »

This famous quote was claimed to have been uttered by the infamous Queen Marie-Antoinette during one of the famines that occurred in 1789 France. Upon being alerted that her people were suffering due to widespread bread shortages, she is said to have replied, "Then let them eat cake."




I keep thinking of Marie Antoinette when I I hear social media gurus hitting the same nail over and over on the power of the social web. Arent you on the bandwaggon yet ? You need a website ? Eat some social media cake. You need an advertising campaign? Wait a second, have some social media cookies. Sales are down ? How about some nice warm social media muffins. None of these are going to get you full, and they will probably give you scurvy if you rely only on them for your nutrition, but hey…they sure taste good! Hmmmm cake !

Social media alone is bad. Really really really bad. Who cares if your company is on twitter or answering to some blog war between elitist bloggers. Make sure you cover some basics 1st. Apparently 47% of marketers don’t even use analytics. Are you?

How much do you really know about your users ?

Can they find you well from search engines ?

Is your website helping users in ways that are meaningful for them ?

What can you offer to users online that will bring them back and create value ?

How much of what you’re spending is actually working ?

Do people care about flashy gizmos online when they’re looking for information or connecting with friends ?

Asking simple questions and getting simple answers to make better business decisions is the cornerstone of good nutrition, euhh, I mean online strategy.

Sure you can eat cake all day long and make thousands of friends on Facebook, get poked and grow your followers list on Twitter. Just make sure you’re doing that on a full stomach of good site design practices, coherent brand experience and relevant functionalities that make peoples lives better.

Marie Antoinette’s famous line landed her a gig with a guillotine quickly after. Be careful out there!

Twitter and US online adults

11% of online adults use Twitter or update their status online.
Twitter users are mobile, less tethered by technology.

New study from Pew Internet available here

This does not include adults who read and update their status on facebook, so we can only assume that the percentage of adults is much higher as Twitter has a smaller reach that FB.

http://steverubel.typepad.com/files/pip-twitter-memo-final.pdf

UPDATE: Qbert72 pointed out a grey area in the polling methodology.
It reads as follows: "Use Twitter or another service to share updates about yourself or to see updates about others".

While this does not explicitly lead Facebook users to answer yes, it prevents the data to reflect Twitter-only users versus users who have have updated their status in another social network platform.

As Qbert72 was lightning quick to point out, the 1st footnote makes light of the definition of said-Twitter:

"This definition can also potentially include use of status messages or mood and location messages on a social network site. All references to “Twitter user” in this report refer to those who say they update their status on social networks or elsewhere online."

Clearly the grey area was probably flagged at Pew and the footnote was inserted, *sigh*, thus making the 11% metric a little more ambiguous. However, looking at status updates/tweets on a platform neutral stance, and setting aside "generalized media Twitter hard-on" conspiracy theories, the adoption rate for ambiant awareness intensive tools is tremendous.

On a footnote of my own, I will re-state that if a follow up study should be issued and the methodology clearly asked if participants used Facebook to update their online status (versus Twitter) the percentage would still be higher than 11%.

Talk to Frank: anti-cocaine awareness campaign

Probably one of the funniest viral videos I've seen in a while. Obviously not as graphic or in your face as Montana Meth, this campaign takes the humour approach to cocaine use. Cool video paired up with a video intensive website. A must see.

After being sent to clubbing influencers, the campaign launched a prevention website that provides information about the dangers and risks of cocaine use: Talk To FRANK. The website takes us to the darker side of cocaine with our guide Pablo, a dog cocaine mule that has been sliced open by drug traffickers. As you can see, the website doesn’t dance around the issue, but shocks its young target, who are used to realistic and difficult images. The website provides information, advice, telephone numbers, and an instant messaging service. There is also a YouTube channel that collects all the campaign videos.

From Culture Buzz




!UPDATE!
Just got an email from Jess at Rubber Republic giving me a heads up on the new FRANK campaign ahead of its TV launch this week.

As well as illustrating the range of effects cannabis can bring to those who take it, it also highlights the fact that cannabis was reclassified to a Class B drug last month, which many young people may not be aware of.

Thanks for the heads up and good job on keeping tabs on the blog noise on your campaign!