SarahDaly

As Internet Marketing consultants, we spend a noticeable amount of time advising clients on how best ot use social media for marketing and branding purposes. Plenty of blog posts in our industry have documented the dangers of this–we virtually advise companies to let their employees build an online following in order to achieve a commerical goal; however, many companies let employees use personal accounts, tied to their personalities, avatars and non-commerical email addresses. If and when an employee and a business part ways, these social media accounts often leave with the individual. Bloggers involved in online marketing have covered this pretty well; however, there is another question  involved in social media brand building, and that is one of personal self control.

In a recent piece about the “outing” of the famous anonymous blogger Belle de Jour, Paul Carr at Techcrunch stated that “blogging is is, by nature, an egotistical activity”. In the past, Carr has also pontificated on how all forms of expression within social media, including activity on Facebook and Twitter, are egocentric activities. They are addictive, even to the less egocentric user. Once heavily involved in an online community which prompts a person to share details, photographs, opionions, etc, many people simply fall in love with the sound of their own fingernails tapping away on their keyboards.

For commercially-focused social media, this is dangerous. It takes a lot of self control to maintain professionalism in an online environment where personality-driven sharing is the norm, in-fighting is rampant and people are encouraged to be as open as possible. Combine this with the fact that simply blogging and tweeting about hard-line, corporate subjects ends up reading like a stream of press releases. Which doesn’t exactly invite readers and followers. If someone is to combine the benefits of social media usage with commercial success, they must be able to interact as humans without devolving into using their accounts to further their personal agendas.

It sounds simple enough, and yet people fail to keep their egos at bay when representing a brand all the time. Even when the brand is something close to the blogger or twitterer’s heart, it is important to keep a check on how your personality is influencing what you write and how you view the service. Is the service becoming an outlet for your own politics, posteuring or personal whims and fancies?

There is a balance to be struck between caring enough about the content you put online and caring to the extent that commercial ventures become infused with your personality. As an individual, it is not necessarily good for you to invest your entire life in an online sharing manner, such as Twitter. As a businessperson, you risk alienating an audience that sees your professionalism slip into egotism.

They say that social media has the potential to make anyone a star, although it’s rare to see this actually happen to your everyday person who is noteworthy for nothing apart from his or her presence on a social networking website. Regular people nowadays can build thousands of followers, but every now and again, social media really does make a celebrity out of normal people. Take Justin Halpern, for example. The 29 year old from San Diego started a Twitter account to document the amusing things his father said. With fewer than 100 tweets sent, the account had amassed over 700,000 followers. And now, the CBS television network in the United States is considering turning the amusing quotes into a television comedy series. The LA Times also reports rumours of a book deal.

The BBC reports, via Hollywood Reporter, that Halpern may well co-write the show. Thus, we have a situation where a 29 year old who lives at home with his aging parents is soon to become a writer for a major television network, all because he began a Twitter account.

Of course, this isn’t particularly common. With more and more individuals and companies signing up to Twitter, being noticed in the crowds become harder and harder, and what was once a high follower count is now relatively normal. However, anything over 100,000 followers is obviously still a very large number, even if quite a few of them are corporate account or, at worst, spam. It is, however, still something of which we could never have dreamt recently: this person doesn’t even have to write for a blog or maintain any sort of public persona outside of posting things his father says onto Twitter. In that regard, Justin Halpern isn’t even the creative force behind the content.

This brings us to another interesting point, however. How much of something’s success is due to the creative aspects of the idea, and how much of it is due to the person who takes that idea and manages to do something with it? One could argue that all the best content in the world would go begging for an audience if it weren’t for people who knew what to do with it. In this regard, Justin is just as important as his father: He knows how to structure his father’s “content” such that it appeals to a large number of people. It probably helps that Halpern has experience in the world of online publishing: formerly a writer for Holy Taco, Halpern is now employed at Maxim.

Even with online publishing experience, it is still astonishing that someone could develop the following this Twitter account has in such a short period of time. To be fair, “niche” blogs are all the rage right now: websites that do nothing but post specific content like Failblog, Don’t Even Reply, and FML document messages all of a similar variety. There are many more sites like this which are doing equally well, and Halpern’s Twitter account fits neatly into this fashion, but is still an amazing story of success.

For businesses, the lesson is slightly thin; however can be summed up as a case of finding a catchy selling point with social media. Often, this appears to involve taking very obvious and common occurrences (such as the amusing things one’s family members say) and turning it into a cult success. Despite the television show and book deals, imagine if Justin had begun the Twitter feed with the intent of directly monetising it, coming to the project with a conversion plan and a secondary product that the tweets served to market. “Conversations” and branding aside, this has to be the goal of the majority of our social media endeavours.

After months of planning – the greatest part of which was debating the best type of coffee machine to install: Dura – I’m pleased to say we’ve brought together an exciting group of people to make up our More Digital team.

Between online marketing and branding, business innovation through technology, and some of the best commentators in social media, we have the right mix of expertise to make a difference to our clients. We want to keep the news fresh and meaningful, and use our knowledge to help you build on your marketing strategy.

This blog will be all about ideas that can become a practical part of how you engage with your customers.

We look forward to chatting!

Sarah Daly