ErgonomixPR

This is a post about social media becoming the wallflower at the school dance. Businesses are trying to embrace their online personas and are inundated with Tweetdecks, Hootsuites, Twhirls, Tweeties, Seesmics, and other hullabaloo.

However, “The cost of convenience is being expensed at the price of integrity.” (Christina Lor, quote me, seriously.)

I am frustrated, as a consumer, to find that organizations exist on Twitter <via Facebook>. Whyyyyy?

1. You aren’t engaging your stakeholders.
2. Your FB status is longer than a tweet, so you’re message or link gets cut off.
3. different platforms = different strategies = different publics. Plus, the language is different = bad translation

Dr. Mihaela Vorvoreanu, of Purdue University, said,

“Even personal undiscriminated cross-posting across Twitter & Fb is a bad idea.”

She wrote a post, in November, that alluded to ‘total chaos’ from the deconstruction of our ‘relational selves’.

Our relational selves (being different around different groups of people) develop, as she describes, a social intelligence. We create reference groups to identify with and become significant or insignificant compared to other reference groups. Dr. V develops a view on the meaning of messages as the context dependency within a reference group.

As a consumer, I use Twitter, Linkedin, and Facebook differently because I have a range of reference groups and friends that identify with each tool. We communicate in our own context-dependent language and have a different calendar of events. For those that have difficulty relating to social media, it may be the friends you invite to dinner from high school, the ladies you meet up with for a book club or Junior League, and the friends you tailgate with on Saturdays. You may feel like you could not entertain them at once, but tend to include them when there is a common thread of interest or persons of interest.

As a public relations practitioner, I communicate differently with unique messages when engaging with Twitter, Linkedin, and Facebook. Linkedin would not be approriate for the use of abbreviations or hashtags. I want to see what kind of testimonials you’re receiving, who you know, and what experience you have under your belt. Facebook would not sync well with Twitter because you may exceed your character limitations, which render your links as broken and thoughts incomplete. This is a failure. Plus, you cannot keep track of the communication coming in using one platform. You should be checking them all periodically.

I see these social media “experts, mavens, enthusiasts, et cetera” leading workshops and, referencing technology in communications, on television and they make me cringe. Cringe because they are telling people how to fail for free. They all sing the praises of syncing your platforms of communication to broadcast simultaneously, but then you would be neglecting the context of your reference groups and failing your stakeholders.

Why would “experts, mavens, enthusiasts, blah blah blah” encourage you to create fallacy on your integrity and make you look bad? And why would you hire them for that?

Here’s some free advice: Don’t ever sync across the board. If you can’t afford the retainer, pay for the consultation, identify your reference groups and honor your patrons. If you’re above the consultation, then please respond to those that take the time to leave you a message.

Facebook as a social media tactic has expired it’s window of opportunity. In the rapid pace of creating a Live Feed v. a News Feed, killing groups for Fan Pages, pokes to superpokes, the function got lost in the shuffle. Updates in general become a kerfuffle of information that I, personally, have opted to remove from the stream of information. If you were taking quizzes ad nauseam, I am not subscribing to your feed, in fact I’ve taken it off the table completely.

This is the curious conundrum of ingenuity and obscurity. Zuckerman + Co. clearly made the FB empire expand it’s breadth and width too quickly. People do not adjust well to change and once they have mastered on new application it was time to learn another. What irks me is how today, which is a step-up from yesterday, those in the public relations industry are defending FB as a tactic.

I have been told that, “FB is an important marketing tool for PR reps.” To that, I am standing on my soap box, “You’re right. That is the best way to describe it, FB is a marketing tactic and not for public relations!” I value the support marketing can lend to PR and what PR brings to the marketing table. That, however, is not my schtick. It’s great if your niche can benefit from the exposure, but where do you draw the line between direct mailers, e-blasts, e-vites, fan page updates? To me, as close to a PR purist as I can be, they are one-in-the-same. People are inundated with their friend feed to take notice of your fan page.

Although, in this particular discussion, this person has garnered attention around their client into the thousands, which is a tremendous milestone. I applaud their work and call it marketing. They have created nested a little corner of FB and provided a glorifed discussion board for their public. Here I am thinking, discussion boards have become extinct, but I am reminded by my good friends about the Sound Tribe Sector 9 “Lowdown” that is somewhere near religion for that circle. At a much closer glance, you see that the agency managing that particular fan page has liked many of their own posts.

A wonderful following is fantastic, but when does the focus become your client above your own self-promotion? I am reduced to the integrity of the content and the relationship with the public. If it takes 4,000 fans to get a, “Yooo, braaahhh! See you on Tuesday, man I was hungry last night”, then I’ll take building a following with some intellectual integrity over time. FB has diminished it’s value for me and I maintain a few fan pages for the crowd that believes they are so 2.0, when it’s so 2.n0. These stakeholders will not bend for what’s to come, but that’s what makes trailblazers early adopters. We set trends for most and help those that follow find their way. FB is not a terrible tool, but it’s not the wisest decision to make when you are targeting a public of influencers.

In keeping with my brief, and short-lived trend, I’ve provided another episode from Supernews to exaggerate my point.

On a more personal note, I had an acquaintance that beamed into this marketing ploy for $1,000. You join the FB fan page, add something to it’s wall and get as many people to “like” it. As of yesterday, she asked me to join and click on somebody or other to vote—on FB chat, mind you for the second time. Usually, people have the courtesy to send it in a group or a thread to your inbox. This person had the gall to just word vomit without periods and end with HOPE YOU’RE DOING WELL. Well, I hope they take their medicine because I didn’t have the opportunity to “ignore the request” and opt out of the group, instead I opted out of her Facebook friendship.

As a PR professional, I value the importance of creating a platform or channel to your public, but do not become your public. Gaining your public’s trust is an investment of time and having a game plan for better or worse. It’s not the no-comment, but how can I address your concern ESPECIALLY if it’s negative. It is thanking your public for recommending you to others and not just spamming to get, only, your message across. Above all, your organization should cultivate accessibility, not just visibility.