The interesting thing with Facebook is that, with 500 to 800 million of us connected around the world, it sort of devalues information and devalues knowledge. And this isn’t the comment of some reactionary who doesn’t like Facebook, but it’s rather the comment of someone who realizes that knowledge and new ideas are extraordinarily hard to come by. And as we’re more and more connected to each other, there’s more and more to copy. We realize the value in copying, and so that’s what we do.

And we seek out that information in cheaper and cheaper ways. We go up on Google, we go up on Facebook, see who’s doing what to whom. We go up on Google and find out the answers to things. And what that’s telling us is that knowledge and new ideas are cheap. And it’s playing into a set of predispositions that we have been selected to have anyway, to be copiers and to be followers. But at no time in history has it been easier to do that than now. And Facebook is encouraging that.

- Mark Pagel, Infinite Stupidity

I see lots of this. Plenty of companies looking for someone who knows Google Analytics, is familiar with social media, can edit in Dreamweaver, who is proficient in Adobe Creative Suite and, usually last on the list, is a good writer and creative. Those first few job requirements? Those are skills. Skills that can be taught to any competent applicant for your job.

Those last two? You can’t teach those. At least not as quickly or easily as you can the others. It’s a bit of talent and lots of hard work. It’s knowing what is and isn’t good.  Any schmuck can use Google Analytics to tell you which pages attract more traffic and from what sources. Only a few can concept the ideas and execute the content that brings the people there in the first place.

We’re placing too much emphasis on the medium and not enough on the quality of message.

Well, next time you’re at a big family dinner, ask everyone who remembers the Budweiser Clydesdales kicking a field goal or Mean Joe Greene trading his jersey for a Coke. Now ask who has heard of the Pepsi Refresh Project. There’s your answer.

I think you sometimes have to push way too far to get what you want. And the hype surrounding social media went way too far. So begins a settling period where companies like Pepsi begin to realize social media isn’t the holy grail of marketing. On the other hand, the hype led to the web being used like never before. The creativity demonstrated over the past two years has been incredibly fun to watch. But the question is, has it been profitable?

There’s still a place for social media. Just don’t expect it to replace the effectiveness of a Super Bowl ad, or any well-executed TV campaign.

Listen, I understand the importance of a blog post title. Just like any other headline, it needs to grab attention, spark curiosity and ultimately make you read the body of the post. Still, blog authors are allowing concerns over attracting traffic to undermine the quality of their content. The blogosphere’s informality doesn’t justify writing headlines of suspicious intent and curious immaturity.

For example, let’s look at a post from the well-known inbound marketing company, Hubspot. Today, they’ve published a post titled, “What Did Jane Austin Know About Social Media.”  It’s insulting to anyone smart enough to read this blog post to imply that Jane Austin knew anything about social media, let alone to suggest she’d be involved in social media if alive today. I’ve insulted myself by even having to write that last sentence. Furthermore, the post transitions from headline to body content not via Jane Austin’s own literature, but instead a TV series interpretation. What would Jane Austin say about that kind of etiquette?

While they have good intentions, Hubspot and many others are simply trying too hard. Weakly framing social media etiquette around Pride and Prejudice is amateur, poorly thought out and, more importantly, unconvincing. I know Hubspot is much smarter than this and expect better. While I may be too hard on Hubspot, the truth is they’re just the latest in a long line of well recognized internet marketers to fail its readers by creating content that stretches too far to make a simple point.

This kind of content runs rampant in the SM industry. There are far too many posts of this nature, most of which simply repeats the same vague advice only with a different, absurd frame. I’d love to be able to blame on all the supposed “social media gurus,” but the truth is some of the most respected names in the industry are guilty of similar tactics.

Posts such as Hubspot’s are easily identifiable and share similar characteristics:

1. Titles that don’t hold up for the length of the blog post. The post’s headline will often promise a connection between social media and some pop culture reference, only to force fit the content into the format, creating a mess of words trying too hard to satisfy the unrealistic metaphor set up by the post’s headline.

2. Vague advice. Swap out “social media” for a different subject and the post still makes sense. Go ahead, try it.

3. Starry-eyed, irrelevant comments. The comments left for these posts contain over-the-top exclamations like “how true!” Absent are comments initiating debate or contributing further to the topic discussed because there is nothing substantial enough to debate.

The criticism of Hubspot’s post above and similar posts below is rooted in the high expectations readers have when reading content from industry leaders. There are some influential, well-known names in the list below, many of whom I respect and enjoy reading other content from.

My message to these authors: you and your readers are too smart for this dumbed-down content. Most of you have proven you’re better writers than posts like these lead on. Think twice before writing that next headline.

Some other equally as stupid social media blog post titles:

What Socrates Can Teach You About Social Media

What Seinfeld can teach you about social media

6 Things World of Warcraft Can Teach You About Social Media Success

What Jason Bourne Can Teach You About Social Media

What Tyler Durden Can Teach You About Twitter And Social Media

What Zig Ziglar Can Teach You About Social Media

What Chad Ochocinco Can Teach You About Social Media

What Brett Favre Can Teach You About Social Media Strategy

What the State Department can teach you about social media

Photo via striatic.

- The Grumpy Brit

1. Haven’t had enough of the AT&T/Luke Wilson commercial bashing? Read some more.
2. Google quietly releases Goggles, allowing you to search by picture taken from your phone. Sick.
3. If you had $500 to spend on a digital campaign, what would you do? I bet it’s not as smart as this.
4. Social media gives branding a bad name. The Grumpy Brit straightens it all out for us. (Love the last line of this)
5. How to make street flyers a little bit better.
6. Think online video is huge? Think again.
7. Dave Trott takes simple soccer advice and eloquently applies it to advertising. Love it.
8. Worst post of the week: 137 Twitter Marketing Tips for Small Businesses. 137? Really? Twitter is the simplest tool on Earth, don’t complicate it.
9. Best post of the week: The Content Strategist as a Digital Curator. Really unique perspective on managing online content. Long but certainly worth it.
10. Timely post of the week: The Art of Manliness Holiday Gift Guide 2009. Definitely asking Santa for that vintage tweed MP3/Radio.

Not satisfied? This 5-minute video of Dan Wieden should do the trick.


Between The Cracks is a weekly roundup of noteworthy links that you may have missed. It is most definitely not a weekly commentary on defecation. Get your mind right.

The hotel (whose sales are down 25% this year) is turning to Twitter users for public admission of sins to help spark business. Twitter users are encouraged to tweet their sins (Vegas = sins) along with the #mgmsin hashtag, which the hotel will monitor and award a free nights stay to a random guilty tweeter each day for  30 days.

The hashtag also allows bored bystanders (yours truly) to monitor the stream and read some gross curious sins (see above). The real kicker to this campaign is what MGM will be doing with the tagged tweets. Think projectors. Think big buildings. Think embarrassment:

The campaign kicked off on Twitter, but out-of-home wall projection systems in Los Angeles will shine the confessions from dusk until 2 a.m. on the side of buildings, such as Staples Center, Nokia Theatre and LA Live complex in Downtown LA, and Hollywood and Highland.

-From MediaPosts’s coverage of the campaign, read more.

I say Kudos to the MGM Grand. Original idea and creative execution. Let’s see how it plays out.

But will it stay that way?

Small business turn to Twitter for a variety of reasons, none more important than its simplicity and cost. If I told you that your business could potentially increase sales using a free marketing tool that’s incredibly easy to use, you would certainly give it a try.

Over and over again, we hear that all Twitter and other social media tools cost us is our time. But what’s your time worth? What’s your hourly rate from 9-5? Why stop calculating at 5pm? If you make $15/hour, is it worth $15 for you to spend an hour a day on Twitter? Will you see an extra $15 in sales for your small business?

Perhaps the bigger question to ask is if you spend an hour a day on your other marketing efforts? Is Twitter’s free cost leading small businesses to rely too heavily on the popular tool? I can’t help but think that some businesses, who already have cut their marketing budgets, are giving social media an increasingly share of marketing time and dollars.

Is Twitter’s success and quick adoption due in part to the fact that we all have more free time in a recession to spend on something like social media? I think it may. And this leads me to question small business marketing priorities once the economy turns around and there’s money to spend.

Will small business turn to the proven, traditional marketing efforts and begin to phase out social media as their business picks up and grows, as they don’t have time to sit in front of the computer for a few hours a day?

We all use Twitter to learn, but most Twitter advice points users to follow the best and brightest in a particular industry. Effective advice, sure, but don’t we also learn from what not to do just as much as the opposing alternative (see #fail)?

We shouldn’t treat Twitter as any different. Just like anyone else, I want to discover new or different trends and outlets from those I follow, and I’m guessing most want the same in return. We all get the give and take, the foundation of efficient Twitter use.

But I have to admit, I’m guilty of following people just to take.

I’m no Twitter expert (are there really any, given Twitter’s stark simplicity?), but the established taboos provide a litmus test for qualifying follow backs. Not RT’ing anything good or at all? Constant self-promotion? No follow backs for you.

But here’s the thing– the people who often come across as promotional or make a habit of Twittering the mundane details of life seem to be the ones claiming some kind of social media expertise or experience.

While I don’t like these tweeps, I can’t stop following them. I look forward to the next tweet telling us social media’s all about sharing ideas, then seeing six songs from Blip in a row.

Am I a social media expert? No, I’m not even sure what being an expert entails. I’m unsure why social media people only get to add ‘expert’ to their title, when the rest of the professional world uses real, established and recognized titles like manager or director. Expert is self-proclaimed, unsupported and unsubstantiated.

Adam Singer at thefuturebuzz.com said it best, “You don’t need a social media expert, you need a good marketer.”