When Social Media Becomes Hollow

Tom Johnson — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 03:09:02 +0000

I attended Podcamp Salt Lake City (Podcampslc.org) on Friday for the third year in a row. The attendees have fluctuated. The first year, about 30 attended. The next year, about 90 attended. This year, the attendees decreased to around 45.

Sometimes events just suffer from poor timing. We are all so busy. But I noticed another trend: more and more sessions focused on social media, almost as much as podcasting. Here are a few of the session titles:

Client Attraction with Digital Media
Using social media to promote your content
Leveraging New / Social Media for Personal Branding
5 Killer Press Release Strategies For Your Podcasts

At one point I wondered if the social media club had infiltrated the podcasting crowd. Among the audience, it seemed everyone was genuinely interested in using social media to grow their business.

Thom Allen, the organizer of PodcampSLC, is even considering changing the name and focus of the conference to broaden the scope next year. I mentioned that we could change it to a “Social Media Camp” and include podcasting as a subtrack, fitting it into the larger trend of social media. If we changed that focus, I’m confident we would have 95+ bouncy people attending.

Many of the topics around social media included strategies for increasing your visibility and followers. One presenter laid down a social media methodology: get the reader’s attention, ask permission to interact (via a newsletter sign up), build trust with content, and then use that trust to influence decisions. It’s the same strategy Jason Van Orden teaches.

Other social media tips recommended by presenters included registering domain names in every social media space available, responding to every Facebook, Twitter, and email reply you receive from readers, and maintaining a presence in all major social media spheres, even the untrendy MySpace.

I’m not a huge social media fan, and during one IM moment with Jane, at home with the kids, she said, “I hate social media.” She says she uses Twitter because she wants to interact with her friends, not to “promote her brand.” She wants any “fame” to follow naturally from the content she produces rather than from spending 10 hours a day doing social media networking.

Me too. It’s not that I dislike Twitter or blogging or podcasting or Facebook or the infinite number of new social sites. For me, it’s the idea that social media’s only purpose is to grow your business and readership. I dislike the idea that it’s all essentially a business motive. You build trust so you can influence others and get them to follow you and subscribe to your newsletter. You engage in social media so you can increase your visibility, so people will link back to you, buy your products and services, and so you can take in more money and increase your product offerings. You engage in social media so you can expand your reach and little by little dominate the world.

When the discussion about social media revolves around this end game, I start to feel uneasy. It’s the same ill feeling I had in college when I would speak with business majors. Whereas most of us were engaged in literature or science, business majors seemed to focus only on schemes to make money. Is that how they interpret social media? As another scheme to make money?

I didn’t tweet much during the first half of Podcamp because I simply didn’t feel like it. After my presentation, I was a bit more relaxed and exhausted at the same time. My brain was numb from having stayed up too late the night before preparing my presentation and fulfilling other assignments. But after I ran into an old mission buddy at Podcamp, things started to turn around. I found a second wind and became much more alive. I started asking questions to the presenters, began posting a few tweets, and overall became more engaged.

When I post a tweet, publish a blog post, record a podcast, or engage in any other form of social media, I don’t consciously do it with the intent of growing my readership and increasing my brand or business. I don’t engage in social media for the business-motivated end game. I’m not trying to build trust with readers so that I can later influence them with product or service decisions. I’m just expressing and communicating about things I’m interested in. If the consequence is that people follow me and we interact, great. But my actions aren’t a ploy for influence. Influence comes from being passionate about something that captures you entirely, not from calculating SEO techniques to maximize visibility on every social media platform.

This year may mark the end of PodcampSLC and the genesis of a “Social Media Camp” of some kind. Businesses looking to increase their social savvy will send their marketing team to learn all about the rules of transparency and authenticity. They’ll discover the need for openness and unfiltered interaction with readers and clients. But if the entire social media strategy is built up with an end game of increased sales and customer followers, it will be a hollow endeavor.

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Some Notes from Podcamp

Tom Johnson — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 15:39:38 +0000

Attendance at PodcampSLC tripled from last year. More than 100 people attended, filling the main conference auditorium at Neumont University in Sandy, Utah. I especially enjoyed the opening address from Scott Johnson of MyExtraLife.com. He recommended that you try throwing everything against the wall and see what sticks. As a cartoonist, he showed dozens of cool figures he’s drawn, including one drawn with a sharpee on a toilet seat. He loved drawing cartoon figures. It was his passion — and it totally shined through. He was without question the most successful.

Thom Allen is a natural-born conference organizer. Everything from the setup to the schedule to the recording and orchestrating was smooth and flawless. I was thinking about the name “Podcamp,” though. My understanding is that a camp involves more spontaneous, informal, unplanned sessions. It’s a mentality difficult to pull off. During the time scheduled for breakout sessions like this, everyone just talked with each other. The only unconference I’ve ever attended was one Ann Gentle threw together at the Doc Train West 2008. She asked participants to write something they could share for 15 minutes on a white board, and then we moved through the topics. It actually worked.

One thing I love about Podcamp is the tech-savvy audience. 95% of the attendees have laptops and are on Twitter. When the wireless is down, it’s almost like the power is out. I also liked the 30 minute time length for sessions, with 10 minute breaks between sessions. I learn just as much from a 30 minute session as I do from a 50 minute session. And I could probably learn the same from 20 minute sessions too. The time is long enough to get exposure to an idea, method, or topic the speaker is introducing. That’s really the benefit of a conference: exposure to new ideas. And meeting new people.

I also enjoyed my brief exchanges with Jason Alba and Joseph Scott. Jason recommended that I increase my WordPress consulting fee to $250 an hour. People assume that price correlates with expertise. This is what he charges (for business consulting), and gets it. He also recommended that I write a book. When you write a book, people assume you’re an expert, he said.

The book idea stuck with me. I really should write a book, even if it’s only a short self-published e-book. At the very least, I could use it as an enticement to get people to subscribe to my blog. If I did write a book, it would be an irreverent, thought-provoking one that presented a nontraditional, radical perspective on the tech writing industry.

Joseph didn’t present, but he shared that WordPress is working on a plugin for uploading and sharing video using the same service as WordPress.com. Right now, the only way to get HD videos onto your WordPress.org blog is by increasing your space on a WordPress.com blog, uploading and posting the video on your WordPress.com blog, and then inserting the embed code into a WordPress.org blog. Joseph said to keep aware of some upcoming developments with WordPress and video.

I had to miss a couple of Podcamp sessions to attend a lunch with our IT department’s CIO. I was as nervous about the lunch as I was about my presentation. The lunch went well, but to do justice, it would require an entirely new post. The events that take place in one day are too much.

Jane and me at Podcamp Salt Lake City

I'd Rather Be Writing » podcampslc

When Social Media Becomes Hollow

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Some Notes from Podcamp

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