2009 Resolutions Revisited

So about this time last year I created a list of five social media wishes for Social Media over the coming 12 months, as the year now draws to a close I thought I should review them and make some new ones.

The 2009 ones were mainly:

1) That I never have to sit through a presentation on digital that uses Kryptonite, Dell Hell or Wal-Mart as a proof point on how iccky the web can be, surely we dig up examples that are slightly newer?*

2) That I never have to see a blog post entitled PR/Blogging/Advertising is dead again meme. Really ppl find something better to link bait with in ‘09.

3) To see some case studies with actual ROI attached to them. Thus far I think I’ve seen two – Dell claiming a $1 million in sales via Twitter and HP’s month of the Dragon blogger outreach.  I know that digital engagement is more valuable than attributing figures to it might suggest but as the credit crunches, clients are increasingly to demand that we show them the money

4) That we stop over hyping what social media actually is, as John Jantsch says “Social media is a tool, not a religion‘

5) To see digital become an integrated part of what a PR person does, not an activity that is punted out to a separate silo of experts. Making everyone tick off the list of 51 things every PR person should know would be a bloody good start.

I did fairly well on number one, but then again I didn’t attend that many presentations but I know people that did and despaired that the same old clichés were still being trotted out. I even create an eponymous law about it.

The meme involved in two moved on, people stopped declaring things dead and instead started fighting about which discipline should own social media, there was a nice debate held by NMK in April about online versus traditional PR which came out of a twitter discussion, Drew has a very nice summary of it over here.

On to three, there is a still a lack of hard numbers attached to social media case studies. I know it’s a hangover from PR being difficult to measure but we really do need to address this if social media is ever to gain credibility. Personally I’ve been pushing this slide deck to everyone who mentions ROI as I think it’s a damn good starting point.

I do think that we have stopped over hyping what social media can achieve, and we’re also coming to a realisation about just how incredibly useful it can in certain situations, the recent Eurostar snafu being a good example of what a can be achieved on the fly. How much improved the outcome might have been if there was already decent monitoring and a response policy in place can only be guessed at.

Finally, integration of digital into the remit of the normal PR person’s bag of tricks. From a personal perspective it’s happening at PN Towers but this year has seen other agencies spin out dedicated digital shops so perhaps there is still some way to go on this front.

As for my Social Media wishes for 2010, that will be another post in the next couple of weeks.

If any one is interested in my  personal resolutions they mainly involve this , more of this and this , hopefully doing this in the summer and this  in the autumn, and the odd bit of this on grass as well as on sand. Oh and blogging more, mebbe. And world domination.Natch.

Have a happy Christmas people!

Mythical spam

I was starting to believe that the we’d plumbed the depths of various amusing spam times, but it seems I was wrong for today brings a new twist with a polite request on how to buy a mythical creature.

Google suggests both Argos and Amazon but I have a sneaky suspicion that both might be bidding on the phrase ‘where can I buy?’ rather than trying to answer the world’s unicorn needs. Yahoo answers suggests ebay and various methods for catching your own by the use of elves and Michael Jackson.

AQA, the drunken and argumentative person’s favourite way to Google suggests that you can’t buy a unicorn, however if it is a gift for a younger relative to buy a shetland pony and stick an artificial horn on it. Which is blatantly untrue, for if unicorns don’t exist then who is the star of this reality show?

Flattery…

…will still get you spam-ass comment deleted.

Why do we need privacy

After announcements by Google’s Eric Schmidt around privacy, which I think can basically be summed up as ‘act like your parents/god/all-powerful being of you choice can see what you are to at all times and you’ll be fine’ approach. Followed by Facebook’s tightening up of privacy settings, which could potentially be summed up as a ‘sheesh  you people are too dumb to protect yourselves, let us do it for you’ arse covering manoeuvre. My thoughts have turned to privacy in general, online in particular and the question running around my head right now is, why does privacy matter?

Earlier in the year I had a natter with a psychotherapist of some renown about online privacy, they firmly believe that in 10 to 15 years time that they will be seeing clients present with a whole new set of issues based on our increasing online use. Their fears were based around the importance of non-verbal communication and what will happen when the vast majority doesn’t include it. My concerns were more based on the rather huge likelihood of something stupid that you had done in the past coming to bite you on the arse at a crucial point in the future and what  that would do to your self-image and esteem.

In a handily timed example, the wife of current Common speaker, Sally Bercow,  announced her intention to stand as a labour MP in the upcoming election along with a slew of revelations about her younger self, which was regarded as an unusual step. It is possible that the decision was made to be so transparent after the media accused  her of losing a job after lying about her degree but whatever the impetus, it was a brave and interesting move. Brave in that she has put herself up as the centre of judgemental gossip and voter derision, interesting in its unusualness. It will also be interesting to see what will happen in the run up to the election. Will her move have taken the sting out of any potential attacks by rivals or will her confessions be thrown in her face repeatedly?

Now it is possible that in twenty or so years, when the upcoming bunch of millennials are running the show no-one will care what you did in the past and if there are pictures of you as a teenage goth three sheets to wind hanging around the inernet, then that just adds colourful detail to your general windswept and interesting self and no more. Currently though we have the Boomers and Gen X in charge, and to them thought of (over)sharing every element of your life seems to border on insanity. Now as a society, we excel at accepting behaviour that previous generations held to be beyond the pale*, for example abortion, female suffrage and  homosexuality. Perhaps these are overly weighty examples to support my hypothesis that potentially at some stag in the future we will accept that people do do stupid things in their youth, or indeed at any age, that we are not all beige clones dedicated to a future work self’s protection

Pale is the noun meaning ‘a stake or pointed piece of wood’. It is virtually obsolete now except in this phrase, but is still in use in the associated words paling (as in paling fence) and impale (as in Dracula movies).

The paling fence is significant as the term pale became to mean the area enclosed by such a fence and later just the figurative meaning of ‘the area that is enclosed and safe’. So, to be ‘beyond the pale’ was to be outside the area accepted as ‘home’.  Source: The Phrase FInder