Has Dave Lakhani gone too far with his Social Media rant?

One of the promises we made early on in our new PRimetime.com blogworld was the promise to bring you interesting posts and articles-as we found them. Today Dave Lakhani, a well-known marketer posted this on my on FACEBOOK wall (don't you just love the new language?),I followed his thread to this blogpost and believe it is very relevant to our own teachings and practices re social media for newbies.

Enjoy and please leave your comments on our blog! Remember it is all about the conversation in Social Media!

Enjoy the early Spring sunshine today! Get out and play1

Elizabeth Harrington

"This post is sure to irritate a bunch of people and I'm good with that. I've come to many of these conclusions through exhaustive testing and research and these represent the beginning of what will be a distillation in writing of many of my thoughts.

I'm a big fan of testing. In fact, as a teacher, I don't teach people strategies that I haven't tried myself and been able to have success with. As a marketing and persuasion consultant, I don't ask my clients to take advice or try an idea I haven't already tested myself using my own money. I'm a big believer in realistic (and unconventional) marketing, advertising and sales.

Stick with me, that relates to social media.

From a marketer and persuader standpoint, everything is social media. If you go to your Friday poker game or your bible study and talk about what's happening now, you are spreading a message. If you are the most vocal or influential person in the room, you own the most mind share for the moment.

Twitter, Facebook, Blogs, Digg, and any of the 1000's of other "social media" outlets are no different, they are simply distribution mechanisms for your message or messages you deem important. But, it is still the person with the most interesting thing to say that has the most listeners who believe them and who are willing to continue the conversation that ultimately dominates the conversation.

So many people say that social media is the "people's media" as if it somehow takes the bias and control away from big media today. And that is really sort of absurd. Everyone who starts a blog, who logs onto Twitter, who creates a facebook page or who soundly makes their opinion known to their co-workers are not "the people" they are simply people with an agenda . . . sort of like big media which at least has some requirements around being truthful, no one governs what shows up in a YouTube video or in a tweet stream. That's not all bad except most people are too willing to accept what they see and hear online as real.

All of that said, I'm a huge fan of social media because I agree it gives everyone a voice. It gives the average person a chance to be heard and to share what is real for them. It also gives immediacy and uncensored views of events as they unfold so you can make your own decision . . . and then become a pundit and analyze and defend your analysis both ways.

But social media isn't sacred. It isn't "the people's media" in the social leveling sense, everyone has an agenda and those agendas show up every day . . . which makes it a brilliant marketing tool. And, fame becomes more desirable to some, to the point of increasing narcissism in the United States as people are adored by people they've never met. Fame also becomes less desirable to others because they can't get it or because they realize that a significant price comes with visible fame.

Ashton Kutcher just broke the million follower mark on Twitter today and Oprah had him on her show via Skype to talk about it. Ashton said that social media "democratizes media" that it gives everyone a voice. But having a voice shouting into the wilderness or a crowd who is shouting with you about their own self interest goes equally unheard. Ashton is right though, actors, companies, and individuals can fight back if they are wronged and get the message out to those who want to hear it in an unedited way, minus the spin, minus the press agent and fast.

But while Kutcher got a million followers and did some very nice things (he donated 10,000 mosquito nets to Malaria No More and got some of his big name friends like Oprah and CNN, to do the same) he didn't really create any relationships. He didn't become more accessible, he simply became more visible and will fade into the background of consciousness and lack of relevancy until he does something else interesting. And that is exactly the wrong thing to do with social media.

See what social media does is give YOU the opportunity to create a following of people who like you, who think like you and who want more of the same things you want. It allows you to reach out and connect with people you'd likely not know or reach otherwise, to connect with them, to develop a relationship, to become relevant and thus heard and not just counted.

Social media has also done something else that was very nice, it has caused people who were locked behind computer screens to venture out and meet each other in real time. Meetups, Tweetups and all kinds of other social media gathers have become the new rock concerts where people connect and deepen relationships. And that is very cool . . . and profitable if you are a marketer.

I posted a question on Twitter today, the question was "would you take money to endorse a product or person in your tweets?"

19% of the people said yes
23% of the people said no
58% of the people said other

It was the others that were most interesting.

Of the people who chose other and left a comment the most frequent was "Yes, if I believed in the product, if I used it, if I knew it was good and was likely to endorse it anyway."

In reality, well over 80% of the people said yes they would. And here is the thing. Social media is where the Internet was 20 years ago. People who missed their chance at the big game when the Internet came to town are looking closely at social media and saying "hold on a minute, there is another chance for me to create something here." That something they hope will become their future, their income, their shot at the golden ring . . . and it likely can. Many people are just now figuring out how to do it. People like Chris Guillebeau and Fame Fifteen both who've figured out ways to create a life of their own choosing by being people and using social media, but not by trying to say that social media is sacred and not to be used for shameless self promotion. Media has always been about making money, spreading the word that you want spread and creating some icons while destroying others.

I hope you'll think closely about what you want from social media and how you intend to use it. Social media isn't a fad, it is simply an evolution of the media. Big media isn't going away, how they show up and how they print the news will evolve but there will always be big media and their agenda.

Social media is a tool to spread your message to people who want to hear from you but it is not a tool to ram unsophisticated marketing and messaging down people's throat. In an over-communicated society the last thing anyone wants or needs is someone else screaming at them. I now unsubscribe from anyone on Twitter whom I follow who immediately responds with a canned auto-response about making money online (especially with Twitter). I immediately subscribe to anyone I see doing something eloquent or whom I see as compelling. Some of the brightest minds today are easily accessible on Twitter, Facebook, and through their blogs.

I challenge you to ask the question that I asked of myself in an earlier post, "Why do I matter to you?" The you in that question is your customer, prospect, or member of your audience. The better you can answer that question the better your conversations become. The better your conversations become, the more interesting, meaningful and important you become. The more interesting, meaningful and important you become, the more relevant you become. And, the more relevant you become the more profitable you become.

I truly believe that there is tremendous opportunity for marketers and entrepreneurs in Social Media and that there will be many new companies, jobs, businesses and opportunities that spring up out of the evolution that is occurring right now. The question you have to ask and answer much faster than you did 20 years ago is, what do I want from my life, how can this help me get it and how do I make it happen leveraging the technology that is here today.

In that answer lies your future.

Social media allows you to create independence, how will you create and celebrate yours?

If you are reading this, take the time to leave a comment below, tell me what you think, I'd like to have a conversation and I'm interested in your thoughts.
For more from my marketing expert friend, Dave Lakhani go to:
Read more: "Marketing – The Bold Approach Method" – http://boldapproach.typepad.com/#ixzz0D1tL1zLr&A