At long last, the telltale signs are in the air. The seasons are changing once again. This time, the air is crisp, the sun dips lower on the horizon, the leaves turn into a brilliant fireworks display of nature’s beauty, and the smell of roasting green chile mixed with a faint mixing of firewood wafts through the air.
For communication professionals, however, the one unmistakable sign of the seasonal change was missing. Until last week.
Like clockwork, it finally arrived.
Mark Ragan’s website posted its latest “How YOU Need to do Social Media to Make ME Happy” edict.
The post contained the usual fluff we’ve seen from other similar columns periodically promoted by ragan.com:
Don’t post these kinds of posts, *I* don’t like them. Act this way. Make me happy.
Such examples include:
- Anything to do with your baby (My God! Family items? In “SOCIAL” media???)
- All of the passive-aggressive comments we find amusing.
- How much you and your significant other love each other (because God knows we can’t have love and passion added to anything labeled as “social.”)
- (And political posts doesn’t make the top 10? Really?)
Now, these kinds of posts are always amusing to me, especially coming from Ragan.com, a site that treats Mark Ragan’s Twitter account less like an engagement tool, and more like a 24-7 Spam Machine. More surprising is how often the site finds them and repeats them, given this lack of social savvy.
Ladies and gentlemen, we call it “social” for a reason. People are being social, they are being (one of marketing’s favorite buzzwords) “authentic.” They are talking about things that interest them and their friends, not turning into marketing automatons looking for the next Groupon to latch onto. Hence the reason that the account they use is their own, and not yours, or the corporate account they might run at work.
Please, let me share my own bit of social media advice, won’t you? I call it Benson’s Unfollow Rule.
Wait – There’s an UnFollow Rule?
My one simple social media rule to apply here. If you don’t like what I post on SOCIAL media, the unfollow button is right over *there*. You know, over yonder on the other side of the screen.
Do me a huge favor – save yourself the discomfort that you are obviously feeling about my mind-bending blog posts and scintillating Facebook discussion about topics far and wide. If you don’t like what I talk about, please avail yourself of Benson’s Unfollow Rule. Because life is too short for me to worry about the apparent dharmic damage I’m causing to everyone’s karma.
But the caveat to Benson’s Unfollow Rule? You don’t get to pitch me. You don’t get to avail yourself of the opportunity of my stating, “Holy Monkey Love, I think this new (laptop/cola/coffee/Maserati/pen) is 18 ways of Teh Awesoms!” to my peeps.
Que sera, sera.
It’s not up to us to tell others to write things that are interesting to us.
Really. It’s not.
Gary Vaynerchuk was right, social media was awesome until the marketers came in and screwed it all up. Because if it was up to so many of us, it would be a bunch of people pitching bullshit programs and shiny magic beans at each other until someone snapped and went Jason Voorhees on all of us…
Enjoy this post? Make sure you get the latest article delivered to you as soon as it's published by subscribing via RSS or Email (emails are usually sent out the morning after the post goes live). We respect your privacy and will never spam you.
By day, Benson Hendrix is a mild mannered public relations and social media professional. By night, he works as a freelance “Brain for Hire” - strategic communicator, social media strategist, community relations and management consultant. Hendrix has been called everything from a “social media zen warrior” to a “behind the scenes powerbroker,” to “the loudmouth PR love child of Henry Rollins and Anthony Bourdain,” but doesn’t really believe much of it.
[...] If there's one simple social media lesson it's that everyone will try to tell you one social media lesson. Punk Views on Social Media is no different. [...]