Social media assumes two things about clients: They don't know and they don't care. We have an industry full of hot air, when we're all yearning for some substance. Go on, argue with me. I'm @the_anke on twitter.

1. SPEAK FORYOURSELF
What's wrong with social media?

2. SOCIAL
MEDIA
Currently assumes two things
about clients: nobody knows,
and nobody cares.

3. 2007
• The term social media enters the language to sell
the new reality of the Internet: people are now
hanging out, you need to be there.
• Old Internet: business needs a website. New
Internet: business needs social media.
• So far so great.

4. NEW COMPUTER MAGIC!
• A business can function
without everything else, but
no cash flow = no business.
• Here's a great new thing.
How do we sell it?
• Marketing is the lowest
common denominator sell,
the one thing that is most
likely to get you an open ear.

5. So social media marketing was born.
People used to hang out online before but that
was never monetised to this degree.
Maybe because there were never the huge
unified platforms but probably also because the
THING that everyone knew they should jump
on wasn't so easily put in two words.

6. BUDGET!
And with that, new agencies and
experts to pitch for it:
• PR who know how to
broadcast or ad agencies who
know marketing.
• Entrepreneurs who know
pitching.
• New experts from an MLM
style wave of social media
consultancy business training.

7. SEETHE PROBLEM?
None of the people pitching had ever had an online life
before.
They couldn't pitch 'be online, connect, help people in your
organisation be online and connect to their peers, colleagues
and clients to get what they need right from the source'
because they had never done that.
The only way of being onlineTHEY knew is for profit.

8. Working with humans
Far too complicated.
Clients need something simple, charts, bright
colours, hot numbers and loud pitches.
Decisions were made on the basis of knowing
nothing, and the agencies liked it like that.
0
25
50
75
100
April May June July

9. CONTENT MARKETING?
Now the industry is set up.
Social media has grown a bit old and you can't expand it too
much anymore - everyone already has something in place.
The new thing: content marketing.
It's like we've taken three steps back, rather than one
forward.

10. Where before there was, at least, some agency
kinda thinking along the lines of 'engagement in
the name of the client', that connection has been
removed by one more degree.
Everyone just accepts, as standard, that it will be
done for them.And that it will sell.

11. MARKETING
Treats people as anonymous marks
to be sold to
!
regards people as stupid
!
short-term, attention-grabbing
gimmicks & campaigns
(and boobs)

12. PEOPLETALKINGTO PEOPLE
• based on credibility
• maybe even respect
• a desire to be helpful?
!
SUBSTANCE OVER NOISE.

13. SOCIAL MEDIA AGENCIES
• aren't really that clever (and you know that.)
• A client will have the brightest minds pitching to them,
and then the most junior people that aren't even
important enough for the client to meet make stuff up.
• And speak to people on the client's behalf.
• And we all it accept that as entirely normal.

14. ON A HUMAN SCALE
we can tell the difference.
when you talk to people online, can you tell the
difference if it's them or someone they've hired to speak
for them?
Even worse, someone who's not close to them, entirely
motivated by getting money from you, and generally a bit
of an arse?

15. • It's much the same on a much bigger scale.
• So much of what the organisation also needs is
missed.
• And gets tacked on somewhere else.
Community building, knowledge sharing,
collaboration, instant messaging.
• Completely disconnected from each other.

16. The status quo is broken.
We're not just not evolving the model, we're
allowing it to devolve into something worse.
We're all trying to fit into it but it just really sucks
on every level.
You see the cracks as soon as you know a little
bit more about being online than current model
is based on (nothing.)

17. GROUNDBREAKING.
From the study 'Missing the Mark'
fromTHE ECONOMIST GROUP

18. CHANGE!
It starts withYOU.
Know more and care more.
Be online. Get good at it.
Join in the conversation.
And then push for change
wherever you are.

19. BUTTWITTER IS STUPID!
• Yes, it's also full of shouty people and marketers (thanks).
• Most training is based on broadcasting and marketing
models and doesn't question preconceived ideas,
• And most opinions are based newspaper stories about
celebrities or making fun of it. Or both.
• BUT try using the hashtag at any event and building a
network out of people you've been in the same room with.

20. Having an online presence where you talk about
the things you care about is all there is to
breaking the concepts that 'social media',
'content marketing' etc are the perfectly scientific
holy grail they're presented to be.
The current model is based on people being too
busy, too lazy, too mystified by it all to just go
ahead and do that little thing and burst the
bubble.

21. OH,AND ALSO
by being online you actually benefit personally
building a reputation and connections based on
caring about and being good at what you do
(Just in case you're into that sort of thing.)

22. THE GOOD CASE STUDY
• The Environment Agency.
• Staff have their own
accounts.
• Transparent policy.
• Central account functions as
curator for content coming
from the field (literally).
• They do the thing they do.

23. SEETHE DIFFERENCE?
• So get yourself some actual knowledge of being online and make
better decisions.And then ask for the right sort of training.
• Push the social media providers to do better, to facilitate thinking,
learning and connections.
• Support new kinds of agencies that are filled with skill, with creative
people who help you develop your own way of being online.
!
SUBSTANCE OVER NOISE!

24. –Anke Holst
!
@the_anke
@speakfyourself
http://speak-for-yourself.co.uk
“Speak for Yourself.”