There are a lot of so-called “social media experts” out there. The truth is there is no such thing. The majority of “social media experts” are simply people with regularly updated twitter feeds, a lot of friends on facebook they don’t really know, constantly bombarding you with requests to “like” their public page, which if you do will lead to further bombardment in an attempt to monetize your engagement with them. They’re not experts. They’re idiots.

Social media works when it delivers a service. It works when it connects people together. People are generally less interested in “connecting with brands” than they are with their friends. Advertisers are interested in connecting people with brands. There’s a difference.

I wrote some time ago that the drive towards monetizing social media was “killing the goose that lays the golden egg“. And it seems as if my prediction is starting to come true. Prominent people are deleting their facebook pages. Privacy groups and data protection watchdogs are expressing extreme concern about the way people’s privacy concerns are being ignored.

Jason Calacanis sums it up simply:

Facebook is officially “out,” as in uncool, amongst partners, parents and pundits all coming to the realization that Zuckerberg and his company are–simply put–not trustworthy.

The key to social media is trust.

When trust breaks down, people move away from your brand. Calacanis links to dozens of news articles this week all expressing a lack of trust with Facebook, citing privacy concerns. Calacanis says Facebook have spent too much time looking at how much they can potentially earn from exploiting users’ data and not enough time thinking about how much they could lose if they go down this path.

People don’t like being a target demographic.

People don’t like “hard sell” tactics. When you bombard me with requests to “like” your company, it’s as annoying as being bombarded with cold calls trying to get me to buy stuff I don’t want.

Social media is beginning to feel less like “a way to connect with friends and family” and more like a way for advertisers to target you, learn more about you, and use that information to sell to you — in other words, manipulate you.

That might not be the language of a social media “expert” – but it’s certainly what a lot of ordinary people think. When I read articles using language such as “Facebook Pages switched from “Become a Fan” to “Like” in order to lower the bar for users to engage and connect with brands” it becomes glaringly obvious that social media is becoming a hard sell — and will increasingly be rejected by users.

People don’t want to “connect with brands.” They want to connect with people. Social media is only successful when it engages individuals, groups and communities at this level.

The golden rule of advertising:

Don’t treat people like idiots.

Anyone who does is destined to fail.

Stop looking for ways to monetize social media.

Start looking for ways to genuinely connect with your customers.

Or you, too, will be destined to fail.

Last week, it was widely assumed that television was the defining factor in the campaign — with the first ever televised debates giving the Liberal Democrats, Britain’s third party, a substantial campaign boost. But that didn’t happen, either. Although “Cleggmania” saw Nick Clegg and his party gain a brief poll boost, they actually lost seats on the night. So if social media didn’t win it, it doesn’t look like television won it, either.

Social media brought very little to the campaign.

Antony Calvert’s Obama-style internet led fundraising drive, while interesting, failed to unseat the Labour incumbent, Ed Balls. But moreover The Sunlight Centre’s extremely negative online attack video, heavily publicized on local news websites with paid-for ads, failed to make an impact either.

Facebook Privacy Concerns

In fact, the only really surprising news was when Facebook put its foot in it again with a colossal breach of privacy –  encouraging facebook users to take part in a poll which showed their friends who they voted for — a massive faux pas in a democracy where the right to a secret ballot is sacrosanct.

I’ve become so concerned about Facebook privacy breaches of late I’ve stripped all information out of my profile — Facebook’s constant push to share more data publicly has gone way beyond what’s acceptable to me and this latest example of a cavalier attitude to privacy has only confirmed my concerns.

So where did it all go wrong for the web — and social media?

There’s a great analysis of how the internet affected the General Election here, from one of the BBC’s tech bloggers. He argues that social media played an important part, noting that “A YouGov survey found that a quarter of 18-24-year-olds had commented on politics via social networks.”

But there was no killer blow.

In fact, for me, the only really interesting internet news is that Guido Fawkes, arguably Britain’s leading political blogger, has finally switched allegiances and come out in favour of using Twitter — although he has railed against how it’s not a representative sample of the population at large.

I’ve held off using Twitter to market myself because I haven’t managed to find a use for it that benefits my customers / readers rather than merely advertises me — and I’m a firm believer that my marketing should provide value to customers, rather than merely push advertising / marketing on them — this blog, for example, aims to provide information rather than just sell my services.

I may have to re-think my marketing strategy in the light of one of Britain’s leading bloggers switching sides. But I’ve no intention of spamming you with ads or spending my life updating you on the minutiae of my life. I may start a twitter feed linking you to what I’m reading every day. Then again, I may find something more useful to do with my time. Like, say, work!

It’s been a bad election for social media. It hasn’t been a great election for television, either. It seems that old fashioned word of mouth and door-to-door campaigning have been the most important ways of communicating. That’s something every so-called “social media expert” should be paying attention to.

Social media isn’t the silver bullet many marketers claim it is.

It may improve campaigns, but it hasn’t replaced old-fashioned offline campaigns

…yet.

Anyway, between personal, family and business reasons, I’ve clocked up several thousand miles in her this month. As I scraped another pothole, I said to my passenger, “we’ve really got to stop and put some air in these tyres.”

You can’t charge for fresh air.

My friend said “it’s twenty pence at Tesco to use the air machine now.” So I drove another mile to the next petrol station. While I was there I filled the tank. A transaction putting two hundred times more than twenty pence in the petrol station’s coffers.

The point of my anecdote?

Some things are better off given away for free. By trying to charge me a nominal sum for something that’s effectively free elsewhere, they lost out on a much more valuable transaction.

Information is a little like air.

Sure, you can charge for it. But the chances are, unless you’re a university professor, you don’t make your living out of it. The chances are you know a lot about what you do. If you’re a baker, I bet you know some great cake recipes. But you don’t make a living selling the recipes. You make a living selling cakes.

That’s why a blog is a great place to give away information and get people interested in what you’re really selling. It seems like common sense, but it still amazes me how many people aren’t interested in giving out information. They want their blog to be a sales pitch. It isn’t. Or else they want to charge for the content. Why? It’s the internet. Sooner or later, you’ll find the information you’re looking for. For free.

The blogs I read the most very rarely tout for business. They’re the air pumps at the petrol station. They’re a service given away for free.

Sound pretty basic to you? It is. But it’s amazing how many people still don’t blog regularly. Here’s a few good reasons to blog:

• People will be more likely to recognise your authority on your subject. Give away great recipes to try at home? Then people are going to be more likely to think you bake great cakes.
• The personal touch. The internet can seem pretty impersonal. By blogging regularly, you’re letting potential customers get to know you better, increasing the chances of a conversion or a sale. Your blog should never be dry. Your blog should convey you as well as your ideas.
• Keywords, keywords, keywords. The more you blog about things relevant to your business, the more keyword-rich pages you’ll have showing up in Google. Update your blog once a week and in six weeks you’ve doubled the size of a six page portfolio site.
• Traffic. If you write well enough, people will keep on coming back. More than that, you can use your blog as a place to test out new ideas about your business. For example, I recently asked my readers if they thought I should be on Twitter. They didn’t. So I’m not.

But, you say… “I just don’t like the idea of giving away something for free! It’s a lot of hard work and I’m still not convinced I’ll get anything out of it.”

Most people are stuck in the real-world mindset that something-for-nothing is a bad deal. On the internet, it’s the only deal.

It’s why pay-walls around traditional newspaper sites never work. Like my earlier example, I’ll drive an extra mile to avoid the very small charge — and end up spending a lot more elsewhere.

Draw people in with your blog. You don’t need to sell them something directly.

Your blog is the biggest and best publicity tool in your arsenal.

It’s the best marketing strategy you’ve got.

You should be updating it more.

]]> http://allday.cc/blog/whats-the-point-of-blogging/feed/ 1 http://allday.cc/blog/caught-red-handed-how-not-to-use-twitter/ http://allday.cc/blog/caught-red-handed-how-not-to-use-twitter/#comments Tue, 16 Feb 2010 17:03:35 +0000 al http://allday.cc/?p=629 I’ve posted before about the perils of twitter. Twitter is a bubble used by a relatively small community of people — particularly, for some reason, politicians and web designers. But in small bubbles, news travels fast. And if you get it wrong, you get the entire self-righteous community coming down on you, as they did recently with Jan Moir and AA Gill or, more noble-mindedly, over the Trafigura case.

But it’s the fact that Twitter is so immediate that makes it so dangerous. It’s like having a gun with no safety catch. If…

The most validatory statistic from the poll toward my view that Twitter ‘ain’t all that’, is that 76% of the British population said they’d never used Twitter and, also, had no intention to use it in the future. In other words, Twitter is a communication medium that encourages groupthink whilst simultaneously making the group believe their views are having influence on a wider population when in fact they’re all just shouting at each other in a locked and sound-proof room.

If 3/4 of the population aren’t using it, and have no intention of using it, it’s a severely limited medium. Sure, it’s great at getting in touch with that 1/4 of the population. But only a fool would put it at the heart of their marketing strategy. When you rely on twitter to do your marketing for you, you’re broadcasting only to a limited number of people with limited appeal. As Dizzy puts it, ‘a locked and soundproof room’.

The prospect poll shows that most twitter users are left leaning liberals. What would a more detailed survey show? That they were more likely to be vegetarians, that they were against nuclear power? That they were more likely to be anti-capitalist hippies? Probably not. But Twitter only reaches a certain type of person. Personally, I think it’s great for tech launches and reaching people who work within the technology / online industries. But that’s as far as it goes.

Because nobody else uses it.

It’s simple. Spend less money.

But hang on — if you spend less, won’t your payback fall too? Couldn’t your ROI actually fall if you stop spending money on social media marketing?

Of course it could. But that’s where most people are missing the point of social media. I don’t think there’s any specific correlation between the size of your investment in social media and the returns you get. Of course, if you spend more money putting your face out there, the chances are you’ll get noticed more. But it’s just that — a chance.

So what you need to do is find a way of spending less while still getting the same returns.

It’s difficult to measure social media ROI. But one thing’s for certain:

Increasing your chance of getting noticed isn’t the same as increasing your social media marketing spend. There is little to no correlation between the two.

Social media acts differently to traditional advertising mechanisms in that you, yourself, aren’t doing most of the marketing. What’s more important to you? That you have a regularly updated twitter feed or facebook page, or that you have a thousand followers? You can pay someone to regularly update your twitter feed. But you can’t pay a thousand people to follow you. Well… you could… but you’d be missing the point!

Unlike traditional advertising, where the more you spend, the more “airtime” you get, the bigger your advert or the longer it runs, etc, the point of social media is that people do your marketing for you.

So how do you get noticed?

The only worthwhile investment targeted at social media is good creative.

If you want people to blog about, tweet about, or simply share your message, you’ve got to give them an incentive. Only a good creative can come up with an inspired idea for a video that goes viral. Only a good copywriter can come up with a message that people want to pass on. Only a good designer can come up with an image that sticks in people’s minds.

If you spend thousands promoting yourself via social media, think again. Sure, you need to spend some money promoting yourself, getting your face, your name — your brand — out there. But the less you spend actually marketing yourself, the better. Good creative will provide you with a message that your customers will pass on to each other. It’s the only worthwhile spend there is.

So by all means cut back on your social media budget. There is, after all, good evidence that social media isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. But it’s not just a case of investing less. It’s a case of investing smart. Creative is the way to do that.

A strategy for success:

Produce less content. Spend less time actively marketing it.
Spend money creating content that actually gets people talking.

Good content will market itself.

Simplify your online presence. Invest in good creative.

I’ve blogged before about how the forthcoming election will represent a paradigm shift in the advertising industry. Elections influence the advertising world for years to come, in the same way that wars create demand for new weapons… election campaigns force us to regularly re-evaluate marketing strategy. It’s a compressed period of time, a testing ground where we can quickly figure out what works and what doesn’t. The forthcoming election will be almost entirely about digital media. Whoever comes up with the most rebloggable, retweetable, viral content will win the advertising war.

Political blogger Iain Dale seems to think so too. His comment about Labour’s new poster campaign being almost totally irrelevant says it all:

No political party worth its salt spends any money on poster campaigns any longer. They don’t need to because the marketing can be done virally, for free.

It’s those last four words that count.

Marketing can be done virally, for free.

When it comes to social media, the only worthwhile spend is on good creative.

It’s inevitable. Most people see social media as a way of connecting with their friends. Nobody sees it as a glorified mechanism for product placement except for advertisers and their clients. People are going to start blocking out marketing-related social media the same way they kill adverts with AdBlock Plus (which I use, by the way — it’s there, who wouldn’t?).

We’re killing the golden goose.

Brand Republic reported today that only 33% of customers trust social networking sites to provide the information they require to make an informed decision about a purchase.

I’ll qualify that with the following comments:

• It’s perfectly possible the study was commissioned with the aim of putting social media in a bad light. But cui bono – who benefits? Most agencies are stampeding over one another to reach the top of the social media pile. This study should give us all pause for thought.
  
• The statistic is 33% to “make an informed decision” about a purchase. It’s perfectly possible that 99% of social network users see social media as part of the process of making an informed decision. They’ll then google prices, reviews, etc –  while social media may not be the deciding factor, it still has an influence. You wouldn’t buy something just because someone’s twittered about it. But you might read a review about it, or go and check one out in the shops.
  
• When compared to the 68% who trust “other online sources”  such as price comparison websites, it’s clear that social media isn’t the ‘magic bullet’ some commentators were making out it was. In fact, it’s perfectly possible that social media just isn’t that important.

But why isn’t social media as important as a price comparison website? The answer lies with the question of trust. 33% trust social media. 68% trust other sources.

I think the flood of digital marketing agencies towards ‘harnessing’ social media is responsible for this lack of trust.

How do we we rebuild trust in social media?
The answer’s simple. We stop milking it for all it’s worth.

Consumers are getting smarter. They were never dumb. But the more information they have at their fingertips, the harder it is to pull the wool over their eyes. So don’t try.

Inform first. Persuade second.
Then, when that’s done, try to sell.

Nobody likes spam. They do like product comparison websites. Nobody likes being told what to think — or what to buy — they do like making informed choices. And if you talk to them like human beings, they’ll listen.

That’s the way to use social media.

Engage with your customers. Strengthen your brand by building up trust — talk to them. Social media is a conversation. It’s not a platform for you to shout your wares like a Sunday market trader.

So I got talking. I didn’t go to pitch my services, rather I went to brush up on the latest developments on the web. What are London’s finest web entrepreneurs talking about?

Well, unsurprisingly, the present obsession is social media. What did surprise me somewhat was how cynical many of the people I met were about it.

Web entrepreneurs think social media has limitations

One person — whose business is basically centred around Twitter — told me, in devastating words, “social media is just a buzzword… it’s the new SEO… all the people who were marketing themselves as SEO experts or gurus or whatever a couple of years ago, well, now they’re the social media experts. Of course they know nothing about either.”

Of course he’s right. SEO was an arcane art and promised more than it could deliver — usually because it attracted one real expert to every ten cowboys. It seems the majority of web entrepreneurs feel social media is going the same way.

People are five times more likely to trust social media than other ads — but for how long?

I’ve been doing a lot of work in social media lately. I think I know a lot about it — I’ve been blogging almost nine years, I was on Facebook when there were only a few ‘university networks’ and you had to have a uni address to join (remember that?) and I can cogently argue using examples, metrics and conversion rate statistics to explain to you exactly why I don’t bother using twitter.

The most interesting statistic I’ve dug up on social media is this: people are five times more likely to trust a recommendation from a friend than they are an advert on the web (stat derived from Socialnomics). That’s not surprising in itself. In fact, it seems like stating the obvious.

What I do wonder is how long that will carry on for. I see an enormous amount of social media “experts” all jumping aboard the bandwagon trying to use social media as a cheap, ROI rich way of advertising. There’s little evidence that social media boosts conversion rates although as I’ve said elsewhere, “you can’t put a price on a conversation, or value the ability to get inside your customers’ heads.”

But I’ve come to look upon social media as something of a goldmine. Incredibly valuable at first. But sooner or later, it’ll run out.

My fear is that the more and more we use social media to push products,
The more social media will become devalued as a platform.

People trust it at the minute because they’re not cynical towards it,
The way they’re cynical about ads on radio or TV.

What will happen if social media marketing campaigns are mismanaged? I know some very good ones — in fact, I’m working on one right now. But I do begin to fear the backlash as more and more companies rush to cash in on virgin markets.

People trust social media. The question is, will the increased use of social media to market goods and services result in a loss of trust — or will social media find a way around it?

Will it, essentially, learn how to reject the most overt advertising campaigns, and pour scorn on the people who use it wrongly, as it did when Habitat attempted to use Twitter?

This post, linked to by Guido Fawkes simply as “Twitter Tsar Talks Tosh” on PR-media-blog.co.uk, sums up a lot about what’s right and wrong with Twitter. Skip to the end:

Labour is experimenting with different social media activities, including a way of using Twitter to make grass roots activists feel more included…

…but is there a risk that Labour positioning itself as the “social media party” will detract from the real issues the public care about? “We’ve been careful about this,” says McCarthy, “as there’s nothing worse than politicians trying to be trendy. Authenticity is important and people will see if we are using it as a gimmick…

But how significant will social media be in helping Labour to victory in 2010? “It’s not the magic bullet that will win the election; it’s a small part of getting across the message but will help in getting activists enthused.”

PR Blog has highlighted a good point: twitter only reaches your converts. It rarely converts new listeners — and advertisers need to be noting that as keenly as politicians. They’ve also made a glaring mistake, by equating twitter with social media. Yes, Twitter is a form of social media, but it isn’t all social media.

As I’ve already pointed out, viral video and other ‘blitzkrieg’ guerrilla advertisements will be what changes the next general election. Tweets will merely give them more exposure.

With devastating simplicity, Guido has passed his own judgment in the comments:

“Oh and she is wrong about the use of social media in a political context, preaching to the choir or interacting without purpose with your base is not politically significant, nor will it have an electoral effect.

Carry on Tweeting, it won’t change the polls.“

I’m not against microblogging.

I’m just not a fan of the twitter format,

or the attitude that goes with it.

I’ve found one that I like – Tumblr.

It’s a great idea: a microblogging service that bills itself as a scrapbook for thoughts, musings, quotes, pictures, links and video. In short, it’s twitter without the restrictive word-count and the emphasis on links. You follow people and have followers. I’m already a big fan. I’ve been following Don Draper for quite some time. My tumblr is full of random musings and aphorisms — it’s also considerably less professional than my blog here. It’s good to let your hair down.

Can anyone recommend me any other good tumblr’s to follow? I’m hooked.

Speaking of mistakes…

…a neckbeard got in touch to point out, not nicely, either, that there was — shock horror — a spelling mistake somewhere on this website and I’d never make it as a writer if I couldn’t spell. I pointed out, rather brusquely, that I’m not a proofreader, and I am, in fact, shockingly, human. That’s to say, I do make mistakes. People hire me because I come up with brilliant branding ideas backed up with sound, cogent copy. They don’t hire me because I’m a grammar nazi. I apologise for my mistake.

He’s the first person out of 16,831 visitors to this site since July to notice. Or perhaps, simply the first person to care. I won’t be offering a prize. I’m sure fastidiousness of this nature is its own reward.

If my eagle eyed friend thinks my dropping an “e” from a word was the most enormous mistake I’ve ever made, I’d hate to see what he’d make of my last relationship…

I like being twittered about. It brings hits to my site. But I don’t twitter about myself. Direct tweets, linking to your own material, are virtually worthless. They’re spam. They’re a flood. They’re a transparent attempt at generating traffic, without regard to the type of user you’re attracting, or the conversion rate you’ll get.

It’s great when people tweet about you, because that’s a personal recommendation. But I also trust a recommendation from a friend on the basis of a blog post, facebook message, SMS or word-of-mouth.

Social media is in danger of becoming just another buzzword. The new SEO. It’s too valuable a tool to let that happen.

It’s become a digital arms race — everybody’s looking for the nuclear social media technique. Twitter, while it has its uses, is more of a cluster bomb — indiscriminate, and used improperly, bloody annoying. Constant twittering will eventually become the social media equivalent of constantly resubmitting your site to Delicious, et al. Devalued to the point of worthlessness.

I read 30 blogs via RSS every day — from the BBC and Times feed to Guido and Perez Hilton, to pirate operations from the bedrooms of as-yet-undiscovered friends. Why? Because they keep me informed. They are my filter to the events of the day. I trust these thirty or so to tell me all I need to know. I turn to their Facebooks, their Livejournals and yes, even a select few twitters, to keep me in the loop. I’m selective, and I generally want a bit of explanation along with my link. Twitter just doesn’t provide enough information for me.

I’m an information hound.

Most people are content with a lot less. Most people are content with fast food, too — but you’ll never attract your best clients that way. I reckon quality content, with a bit (not too much) detail is the best way to increase serious traffic and boost conversion rates. So if Twitter is a Big Mac & Fries, the smorgasbord of social media I’d suggest is more like a palate-perfect plate of nouvelle cuisine.

The key for advertisers, and the companies they represent, is figuring out how to reach people.

A lot of other digital media is getting overlooked in the big rush to Twitter. Don’t forget that people spend three times as long on Facebook as they do on Google. And whether or not they’re reading blogs, someone is — that’s why big, “household name” blogs set the agenda for what everyone’s talking about, and that’s what influences people’s daily tweets.

In short, it’s important that your social media strategy
reaches everyone, either directly or indirectly.

The best way to do that is by influencing the wider discussion,
across all social media, with intelligent comment,
not just mindless links.

And it has to be simple.

Case in point:

I was frankly baffled by this newest offering from Pizza Express. To briefly explain, you have to install (yet another) app in Facebook, invite whoever you want, use the app to make a reservation at your chosen pizza express, and then you get lunch for a tenner. Oh yeah, and Facebook proudly tells the world you’ve installed the app and invited your mate out for a cheap lunch. Privacy concerns? Not half.

I had lunch last week. There was a Pizza Express and a Prezzo on the same street. If I’d planned in advance, and used a system that’s a lot more complex than a printed, money-off voucher, I could’ve got the Pizza Express deal. The Prezzo had a sign outside saying “Buy one get one free on all main courses”. I picked the Prezzo.

Social media only works when it takes the shortest path. When it simplifies. When it makes life easier.

That’s why this is a brilliant example of social media being used to good effect: you can now befriend a gorilla on Facebook for a dollar, a bit like sponsoring a pet. Only it’s simple, immediate, fun, doesn’t require an app, instantly tells your friends that you support wildlife conservation. It’s an instant hit.

I blogged the General Election, back in 2005. Blogging was different then. We were mostly ignored. My blog was just an irreverant look at the campaigns, you wouldn’t have come to it for news.

Yes, we all know blogs are going to be important this time around. We’ve got Guido, Iain Dale, Conservative Home, and even a few offerings from Labour — which are nowhere near as widely read, which I thinks says a lot.

But in the hoo-hah about blogging, it’s easy to forget that the internet is much more than just the political blogosphere.

It’s not just blogs that have gone mainstream in the last five years. It’s viral video.

Dan Hannan’s searing attack on Gordon Brown went viral. Two and a half million views of his “devalued Prime Minister of a devalued government” speech. The blogs have given us smeargate, the ousting of Damien McBride and Derek Draper by Guido Fawkes. That’s a much more powerful story. But when it comes to general elections, campaigns get quick and dirty. Viral video will be the blitzkrieg tactic of choice for both sides.

Not all the videos will be sanctioned.
Many will be sanctioned. Secretly.

All the main players know the power of a good attack video — both political parties, and their supporters. Five years ago, to reach voters visually, you were limited to a 5 minute party political broadcast, a few a month, at set times, with strict limits on what you could say.

What’s interesting is that, today, the electoral commission has come out and said that in this battleground, there will be no rules. None. At all. They cannot police viral video.

Expect things to get down and dirty, very quick.

A couple of examples —
Guido uses his blog to simply demonstrate Gordon Brown caught in a lie. He doesn’t even need to pass comment.
The unofficial ConservativeHome produces a blunt attack video to highlight Gordon Brown’s broken promises.

I for one would love to know which agencies are handling the digital accounts of the main parties, and their supporters. Viral videos are cheap to make, incredibly powerful, and totally without boundaries. The next election campaign will be like none we’ve ever seen before. Whoever makes the most memorable attack video will probably make the same name for themselves that Saatchi & Saatchi made in 1979 with the slogan ‘Labour isn’t working‘ — probably the most memorable British political campaign of all time.

This is an exciting time for advertisers willing to get their hands dirty in politics. Reputations will be won and lost. The direction of British politics decided for maybe a decade, or more.

The Internet: still the World’s Wild West.

I’m a busy man. Just give me the information.

Facebook lite promises to roll back the clock four years and give us the slim, streamlined social networking tool that made MySpace look ugly, primitive and unintuitive. I’ve had a ‘lite’ profile for a while now. No pictures. No surplus user information for third party apps to harvest. No quotes of the day, no videos, just my contact details, alongside the ability to message me and see what I’m up to.

My facebook is just my LinkedIn at play. I wouldn’t want it any other way.

It isn’t perfect yet. It’s still in beta. The text is too big, and I’d like it to be more customizable — there’s some information on the big facebook I might still want to access.

But what interests me is seeing just how many people will switch to Facebook lite once it’s done. I think takeup may well be over 50% — if they can get the interface and integration right. There’s a lot of us who carry on using services like Facebook on sufferance, because it’s there, because it’s the only way of keeping in touch with our friends. We’re the sort of people who grit our teeth and look away in despair, as if a silent fart has drifted across the room, every time you mention Mafia Wars.

We’re the silent majority.

The implications for social media, even if takeup only hits, say, 20%, are obvious — and huge. It means a massive number of users are rejecting the bloatware that’s been foisted on them the past few years. It also means that any links they do share, anything that does go on their profile, will be much more valuable, from a social networking perspective.

Make no mistakes. Facebook Lite isn’t a pioneering project to reduce bandwidth in third world countries, whatever they may say. It’s a system that proves what many of us have been saying all along — when it comes to social media, less is more. Sure, some people twitter every hour. They’re probably the same people who post a dozen quizzes to their Facebook wall every day. But the person who posts just one thing a day, maybe even just one link a week, or even a month — they’re being selective. That makes the value of that post is far greater.

Of course, the new Facebook Lite interface is a lot more like twitter — it does after all focus on status updates. But it remains to be seen if people will use it like twitter. After all, isn’t there already a service called twitter for people who want it?

Anyone who uses social media as a marketing tool should be taking notes.

I’m actually in awe of Facebook for doing this. They’ve differentiated their product for users like me, who are busy and just need the basic facts, from the people who use it for “fun”. My only question is, why didn’t they do it sooner?

Are they worried about the competition? With Twitter on one side and LinkedIn on the other, the answer is almost certainly yes. Facebook lite appeals to users of both.

It’s a stroke of genius.

Yet times are changing. Already it’s being argued that Facebook is killing SEO. Essentially, ‘linkbait’ is what’s going to drive hits to your website in the future. It’s another one of those fancy buzzwords, but it’s nothing new. It’s just a modern form of a technique that has worked for generations — in fact, forever. It’s a personal recommendation.

Yes, there are a myriad of tricks a writer can use to draw more visitors to your site. But at the end of the day, it’s the quality of the content that keeps people coming back, quality that people will tell their friends about. Online and offline, it’s all about the brand image.

If you’re trying to sell people something, they’re still going to be looking at two things: the quality of the product offered, and the right price. Keep them happy and they will tell their friends they’re happy. It’s hardly brain science, or rocket surgery. With the ludicrously high turnover of buzzwords on the web, it’s easy to start believing the hype.

SEO, like twitter, was very much a buzzword of last year. We mustn’t diminish its importance, but it’s also vital to remember the fundamentals. Writing for the web is very much like writing anywhere else. It’s a one-on-one conversation between you and your client, and you need to build up a rapport. The fundamentals of writing for the web should still be good copy. SEO is the icing on the cake.

It’s easy to get bowled over by buzzwords. SEO is vital now but with ‘linkbait’ strategies becoming more important, the basics of good writing remain. Incidentally, my father called me last week. He runs a very successful business, had a laptop when they were big as briefcases, and bought his first mobile phone in the eighties. These days he’s never more than thirty seconds away by BlackBerry. He said to me, ‘I’ve seen your latest blog post. What the hell is twitter?’

I was proud of him. It’s precisely the attitude a company director should take. If you need any further proof that fools rush in, take a look at how Habitat made fools out of themselves twittering this week. Or Jordan.

‘Nuff said.

And they said — write about Twitter.

I said no. For starters, I don’t twitter. From what I’ve seen of it, I’ve no desire to be any part of it. Moreover, writers writing about twitter (from either side) have pretty much done the subject to death. Talking about Twitter (if you’ll forgive me sounding like a teenager) is just so 2008.

Then I read this. If you can’t be bothered to read it, I’ll save you a bit of time. It’s pretentious crap. If you don’t believe me, I’ll reprint the title for you. “Twitter ripped the veil off ‘the other’ – and we saw ourselves” it screams, all but adding a double!! exclamation mark in a hyperbolic gesture that boomerangs back right up its backside. The article goes on to loudly proclaim that twitter “allowed the world to connect with the Tehran rebels.”

Yes, we get it. With Twitter you can aggregate a vast number of voices in a very short space of time. And, obviously, a lot of them are pretty angry about the recent elections over there. But really, this is just stating the pretty-bleeding-obvious. Moreover, it doesn’t tell us a great deal else. Using twitter in this way is really just a way of counting crowds. It’s no more revolutionary than taking a straw poll of your mates down the pub — only now you can do it for people a thousand miles away. It’s something, I admit. But it’s hardly the reinvention of the web.

The simple fact is there are better sources available elsewhere — and the web has made those pretty much instantaneous, too. And if you want the real scoop on Iran, you’re better off looking at the detailed analysis. Already I can access this excellent report from Chatham House.

If you want a report with a personal twist, you’re still better off sticking to the blogs. Remember Salam Pax, the Baghdad Blogger? His reports were instrumental in giving us the inside story on the Iraq invasion. I don’t think his commentary would have been nearly as insightful had he been limited to a few hundred characters a few times a day.

And therein lies the problem. Twitter is a mess. It’s a morass of voices, most of them mumbling pretty inane stuff about their daily lives. I’ve seen people twitter about who they’re sitting next to on the bus — invariably a smelly old man they’d rather not be sitting next to. A fun way of keeping in touch with mates, perhaps. But a revolution in communications it ain’t.

Twitter isn’t good for business because it isn’t businesslike. It is a medium that demands immediacy, and that’s best done at a personal level. Sure you could have your CEO twitter, but shouldn’t he be busy running the business? And if you employ a firm to twitter for you, or leave it to your in-house PR people, well, you’re still missing the point of what Twitter is best at.

I don’t twitter because I think 99% of the time it’s vapid and inane. I wouldn’t encourage anyone in business to twitter for the same reason. Okay, so you can reach your clients quickly. But is sending them a 140 character message that shows up next to some other message about their mate who’s stuck next to Mr Stinky on the bus again really going to send out the message you want to project?