Social Media – Use the Force (to tell your story)

Star Wars - it's everywhere

Even if you haven’t seen the original Star Wars film, you’re aware of the story, it’s become part of our culture, seeping into to so many parts of our lives.  The reason for that is The Heroes’ Journey, identified by Professor Joseph Campbell (and used in every Disney film), a story archetype that stretches back to the verbal tradition and there’s no reason why you can’t use it to tell the story of your brand.

Because social media is a never ending story you can’t follow the heroes’ journey all the way to a clear and happy ending, you have to mix it up a bit.  To explain what I mean, I’m going to use some of the characters from Star Wars.

Dramatis Personae

Darth Vader – The serious part of your story

Han Solo – The plucky individual who finds a new purpose

Luke Skywalker – The hopeful dreamer who follows a higher cause

Princess Leia – The idealist

Ben Kenobi – The sage who gives advice

Chewbacca – Loyal and always there to support

The Droids – The comedic relief

Telling Stories

So how does this fit in with your brand?  Vader and Leia are the boring press release one hopeful, one less so.  Han is your standalone piece of content that doesn’t quite fit in, but is there to push the story forward in a positive way.  Luke is the story of your brand, hopeful and always there.  Chewbacca is your loyal user generated content, there to give you a hand in times of need.  And the Droids, well, they’re there to remind you that social media should be fun and is about entertaining people.

And don’t forget, it was the Droids who told the story to the Ewoks, and are in each film, so their importance cannot be underplayed. People go to social media to be entertained, not lectured.

Change It Up

There’s no reason why you can’t mix up the characters in your story, Luke with Leia can be dramatic or idealist. The Droids and Chewie can be funny.  Even Ben can give advice to Vader.

Know what you’re trying to say and say it with a passion because if you don’t believe in it, no will care about your story.  You have to believe.

And never, ever forget; Han shot first.

It's business, not personal

Rudeness. How to handle someone who's rude on social media
This is an interesting area as a lot of people seem to think that because they can use any name, no one will know who they are, but it simply isn't true. I know of one case where someone was beyond rude, and not only was he tracked down, he was stupid enough to post personal details which made it easier to confirm who it was. We're not talking about the police or private investigators or some clever IT people here either. It was just a bunch of kids annoyed that a friend had been insulted. Basically its very easy to find them is what I'm saying here.

So, a few people were very rude to me, but also very stupid. I gave them the chance to back down, they didn't want to because they were too committed to the cause, and were made to look stupid(including an MP, and I really enjoyed that).  Well they accepted that, or at least one of them has, and they apologised.  A couple of others have sort of jumped on the band wago while using it to make digs at me. So now I have a decision to make.

Do I accept the apology or not? I do want to accept the first apology, I think it was genuine and deserves respect. The others............ I don't respect them, they can't say it honestly, so I feel reluctant to acknowledge it, but I want us to take the moral high ground.

I think the problem is that although its business, social media is personal. It's not me they hate, or at least not directly, they hate what I represent, in this respect, they hate the idea of change. But the hate is directed at me, and as I represent the 'whole' on social media, the hate is sometimes directed at me alone. I've been hated by people before and you know what, by deal. I don't care about their opinion. There's a saying that's been doing the rounds online for a few weeks and it really is true, 'a tiger isn't concerned with the opinions of sheep'.

So if you are getting hate directed at you, by trolls or whoever, ask yourself this, do you really care? Who is this person to you? Unless it's someone who's opinion you respect, or someone you care about, fuck 'em!

Just don't do it literally, then they'd really hate you.

Be wrong, lie or be bland?

Sometimes in social media something happens that makes you frown, then turns it upside down. In this case something happened, all normal, nothing special, just routine business. But there's a little group of people who really hate what is happening with my work (this is nothing bad btw, it's about making things better. In this case if I asked you how we worked, you would be so very wrong, but as for how we will, you've just described it).

So this routine thing, someone told someone, who told someone, and the facts became not just a little wrong, but so wrong that it wasn't recognisable, but this group were positive it was true. Even when the people who were there told them they were wrong, they couldn't believe it. 'You mean the emperor is naked? Don't be stupid, I know, I know, I know!'  They are so entrenched in their view they really can't see the wood for the trees. Right now they are arguing with someone online about it, and he is even saying why I will rarely bother to talk to them. Quite simply, they just aren't worth the effort.

And this is my point for social media people, you will always get idiots who think if they shout, you must listen.  Well I've never seen any PC, Mac, smart phone, tablet or any device to access social media without a mute button. If I want to, I can ignore them very easily. It's also worth remembering that on social media, you can see everything, they can never hide what they say.

If you get a lot of mentions on twitter, you might think it means something, means you're making waves. But if it's the same people retweeting and retweeting again, and again, what are you achieving? It's not a lot of mentions, you're shouting in a sound proofed room.

But if you open a window and try to shout outside, the first thing you must do is the very thing that every journalist does, check your facts. The only thing worse in journalism than being wrong is to lie (or steal someone's byline, but that's another story).  Both amount to the same thing as soon as you've done either, your credibility means nothing. Everything you say after is called into question because you were wrong. If you lie about being wrong, then you just look stupid.

So my main point here is this, if you run social media accounts for your company, always tell the truth. No one will die if you tell the truth. If you don't want to tell the truth, say nothing.

Would you rather be bland or wrong?

Good content and bad content

Sometimes my job is strange. Today, something happened that shouldn't have. I posted a picture, a collage of seven vehicles with a little safety message tacked on. It was only posted just for a toy company to have a look at our range of trucks and it became very quickly the most successful posting ever on Facebook. Now what is so strange about it is the trucks weren't doing anything sexy, five of them were parked, sitting there doing nothing.

Now again this is just like an earlier blog below, but more stranger. People have liked us and followed us to see what we say, and in this post,mew said nothing, nothing at all. Or at least nothing we hadn't said many, many times before. Which again leads me to one conclusion. Social media is a very strange type of work.

We are all looking for something that will go viral, but no one can say what will go viral. Anyone who makes a viral video on YouTube that was seen by 5 million people in 1 week would probably admit in the bar, when no one is listening that they have 19 videos with 1000 views between them.  If you build it, they will come only works for baseball fields in the middle of nowhere. Social media is much more hit and miss.

If you look at your followers on twitter, ask yourself how many are friends? If you have several thousand, ask yourself how many you already follow? How many of them look at your links, your photos, or even read your content other than cursory look? Odds are not very many, which is a depressing thought, because if you don't care about what others are posting, do you really think anyone cares about yours?

If you have a lot of followers, say well over a 1000, but only following a few, have a look at your avi. Are you an attractive woman? if so, how many of your followers are women, and how many men are only interested when you post a photo of yourself? If you are happy with that, I'm happy for you.

In case you think that I'm jealous, I'm not, I can get love on hate on my work account, pick up 50 followers a day on it.  My personal account is just for fun, and I barely post on it. I'm more proud that I only personally know a couple of my followers and one I've never met is a very good friend now, so that to me is a success.

Sorry, I seemed to have rambled a bit of topic there, this is meant to be about what you post.

Basically I'm saying, that what you post could be anything, there are no rules to what is good, what people are likely to want to see, just content. There is no such thing as good content, or bad content. To paraphrase William Goldman, the screenwriter when talking about the films The Postman and Titanic, "there is content people want to see and content they don't".

I hope everyone always wants to see your content.

(This was an interesting and very honest blog about working in social media, if you want to know what it's like, have a read.....http://socialmediatoday.com/rachel-strella/1255821/5-tips-avoiding-social-media-burnout)

Your opinion is wrong

Social media is kind of weird. You have to keep creating interesting content to keep people hooked, and of course there are the people who get annoyed with you. Everything says you should try and talk to those you upset, but to be honest, I can't be arsed with that. Quite simply some people are too stupid to engage with. A very intelligent man once said, that stupid questions should be ignored. A very wise statement.

So anyway, this very small group of people don't like me, or to be fair, they don't like that their argument is so weak it needs them to shout and be insulting when they don't like the answers. I'm a great believer in science and what it can teach us, and it teaches us one thing, to change our minds. We once thought that we sat at the centre of the universe with the stars spinning around us. We now know that is wrong, and we changed our minds. This is because facts change opinions.  No matter how strong our opinions are, opinions cannot change facts.

It's important to remember that, and that you will sometimes need to change your mind. I'm not an expert,but I understand that if I want facts I go to the experts, who give me the facts that will change my mind. If I don't like those facts, my opinion is wrong.

And this what I'm getting at. If you work in social media, then you have to put up with those people, the trolls. It's a pain in the arse, but then so is sitting on an uncomfortable chair, and I'd rather do that than stand all day.

It's an opinion and a fact.

How to get over a 1100 new followers a month on Twitter.

(From 2500 to over 10300 followers in six under six months with only 756 tweets, including retweets)

There’s a lot written in social media blogs about ‘content’.  And when I say social media blogs, I mean ones written by professionals, those of us who work in social media.  ‘Content’ by the way is what you post, the text, the pictures and videos that you put up on your Facebook and Twitter accounts.  The professionals need to call it content as it makes it sound like a product and to be professional you have to have a product.

Which is why I like what I do. 

As it’s a government account, I’m not trying to sell anything.  I’m also limited in what I can post as it’s mainly used for press reasons, anything else that is posted (content) is just general PR to tell people what we do and make sure they know how to contact us.

So is the ‘Content king’ as they like to say?  Not even slightly.  People do not ‘follow’ or ‘like’ you because you are constantly posting interesting content. 

Why do you friend and unfriend people on your own account?  You want to know what they are saying and you no longer want to know.  The fact that I managed to get so many new followers isn’t anything to do with my creativity in saying the same thing over and over again in different ways.  It’s because people want to know what my organisation is saying because what we say is important to them. 

The same is true if you run a corporate account for a large department store chain or anything where you want to try to sell something.  People follow you because you have something they want, when they no longer want it, they will lose interest.

I’ve read a lot about how much and often content should be posted, but frankly it’s bollocks.  You should only post if you have something to say, and the same goes for your personal account.  I will quite happily unfriend someone who posts a lot of random crap all the time, but the people who don’t post, they become a ghost, someone who is there and I am happy to leave there, as they don’t bother me anymore. 

I’m not afraid of ghosts.

But the ones that put out a ridiculous amount of posts, trying to get new followers and likes, it’s a bit, well, desperate.  It’s like the kid in the playground shouting out “like me, I’m funny!”  They are just another wannabe community radio presenter, a noise in the background no one listens to. 

Maybe it has to be different for them, they have to worry about ROI (return of investment) another word to make it look like content is a product.  They need to somehow make people think that they are generating enough trade to pay their wages. 

And if you talk about annoying TV adverts, then they you talk about the company, so if they annoy you with ‘content’, you’ll talk about it right?

Say what you need to say, when you have to say it, and say it for a reason.