Many Social Media Gurus are espousing a new culture that their clients should forget about blogging (adding meaningful content) in favor of the ubiquitous widespread “updates”.
Using automated apps, you no longer need to waste time creating content that teaches or expresses, you can populate across social media space carefully wedged in between someone else’s creative content. I find this appalling.
The new marketing mantras go something like these:
- “Go where your customers congregate”.
- “Gain their trust by sharing your stuff”
- “Soon, you can start to influence their behavior”
- “Once hooked, they will do your deed for freeeee!!”
This is starting to sound more like the neighborhood drug dealer than any sustainable economic paradigm.
Slavery on Steroids
Slavery is a term characterized in part by the coercion of another person to perform or act without compensation. The effects of slavery are not only physical, but mental as well. The effects of oppression manifest themselves in addictive behaviors.
Social acceptance is an extremely powerful psychotic that can be cleverly turned against any person. The techniques of social media are getting increasingly sophisticated in hijacking and consuming the social capital of others.
Green Marketing
It does not take long to see that the marketing professions are defining the social media space regardless of what anyone says about user-generated content. The danger is that social media will become just as unsustainable as the economy that it replaces. People will soon lose the ability to produce the currency that the media demands to support itself.
Ban advertising
t would be high temple sacrilege for any social media monetization strategist to suggest that advertising of any kind must be banned. Well, not exactly, but the objective of advertising can be redefined if there were a means to do so.
The only sustainable monetization strategy (of which there are terribly few current examples) are the deployment of social media applications that empower people to discover their own individual talents, to pursue what they are naturally best at and enjoy doing most – while also eliminating the clutter and irrelevant messages that distracts them from their personal life goals.
This means that brands should communicate more and not less. They should identify, educate, and promote the talents and abilities of a million customers instead of 1 superstar athlete or celebrity.
The proverbial sports analogy:
Advertisers should sit in the bleachers and cheer on their favorite customer, but they should not be in the game, blowing the whistle, or running the scoreboard. Let them pay admission, see my logo, and buy my overpriced beer. Let them sell to each other on their own dime – but under no circumstances should they be allowed on the field, in the schools, or in the home without explicit and expressed permission of the customer.
