I’m going to marry two schools of thought in this blog post — one that entails my daily life as a social media consultant and marketer and one as a new mother.
I subscribe to mentions of my name on Twitter via RSS. When I saw an unfamiliar account on the service that mentioned my name, I got a bit curious to know what was going on. I found out that my friend Sam set up an initiative to have my friends purchase baby gifts for me, a fact that was so nice given that I never had a baby shower or anything like so many people do. For awhile, the “social media baby shower,” if you will, gained momentum. A total of $133 was “raised” (only 54% of that amount has been paid) since the initiative was started. (The goal is $1000.) The majority of these gifts were given on the day the baby was born or the day after. Apparently, once a baby is born, it’s news for 2 days in this kind of sphere and then people just move on with their lives. It’s normal to hear news like this; the only people whose lives are really changed are the parents.
In any event, Sam mentioned to me that I didn’t endorse the project, and he felt that his efforts were fruitless. I’ve thus Tweeted about it and even blogged about it so that my seal of approval was on the initiative. It wasn’t something I thought up, after all, but Sam is a real life friend of mine who I met via social media and the idea was pretty generous and awesome.
I guess this is all well and good, though the momentum died down already. The only mentions about the whole initiative nowadays are people retweeting about the existence of the project. Here are the last few mentions:
Unfortunately, it’s starting to become obvious that without proper action, this is all social media can be. People are sharing information but nobody is actually acting upon what they read or what they hear. It makes most low-trafficked social media marketing strategies and tactics look like a failure. Would that be an incorrect assessment? How many people have seen a high return if the people who want to spread the message aren’t really either 1) connected or 2) interested? You’ll actually need to possess (or hire people with) both qualities to see success in any social media campaign.
Enough. I’m going to simply ask one thing of my peers who have stumbled across the messaging: Perhaps the message will keep getting spread, but if nobody acts upon it, nothing will happen.
I don’t expect anything, really. I didn’t expect this at all either. But if you’re going to spread the message and not set an example for those who follow you, it starts to look pretty bad that the last real donation came 5 days prior and then 23 days before that.
To those of you who have made Sam’s project worthwhile, thank you. I am very appreciative of it.
/end rant
I think it is interesting how many people retweet something and don’t even care what it is. They don’t do anything about it.
It’s like saying, “I am going to tell everyone they need to save the planet because it’s so important, but I am going to drive nothing but hummers, and use only Styrofoam cups.”
We make it SO easy w/social media to feign belief in something
but do not stand up for it in real life. Social media isn’t social media…I actually hate the term. It is REAL life. Real people are communicating. On this blog we’ve talked about taking care of a baby. That’s real, that’s not “virtual”. You are taking care of a real baby. I mean… it’s like people don’t even see it that way anymore.
I think to a lot of people social media is just *media*. Social implies PEOPLE.