This stuff is hard! Really hard. Just when you think you have it figured out. WHAM! You get another surprise that you didn’t expect. It is actually much harder to continue on when you continue to get these surprises. Seriously! How many more times can you face it? How many more times can you wake up to the undeniable, perhaps even inconceivable, fact that far too many people do not know about one of THE, dare I write THEE, best fantasy movies ever made… The Princess Bride. If I was you, and I am obviously not because… well… it’s too early for metaphysics, but trust me that I am not you at least in this universe… I would go out and immediately watch this amazing film. Or, I would watch it again!
Hey Bill? What does this have to do with this blog post? I am glad you asked. Or glad that I am capable of pretending you asked, or will ask as I am currently writing this post and you haven’t asked yet… at least in this universe. In the movie, Vizzini (played by the inconceivably amazing Wallace Shawn) continues to use the phrase, inconceivable, every time the Dread Pirate Roberts/Westley (played by the awesome Cary Elwes) foils his plan. Iñigo Montoya (played by the incredible Mandy Patinkin) looks at Vizzini after he uses “inconceivable” yet again and says, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
Now, since this blog post is neither a land war in Asia nor going against a Sicilian when death is on the line (don’t understand? watch this!), I can comfortably, and with a reasonable hope of survival, finally get to the point. As a writer, heck! as a creator of anything, you undoubtedly know about “social” media. I am here to tell you, that word doesn’t mean what you think it means. Nor should you think it means what you think it means.
You ABSOLUTELY must market to your audience. The ideas of social media was that your audience could talk back to you. You could engage with them. They could engage with each other about you. There would be engagement all around! Heck, they even have metrics called social media engagement. Don’t believe me? Follow this query to YouTube for “social media engagement” and be amazed.
I will contend that much social media is absolutely fraught with perils, above and beyond the typical marketing failures (WOW! This list is too long and too distinguished to iterate.) There are amazingly successful marketing campaigns. There are ones that aren’t successful. There are few true flops or catastrophes, but they do exist. Likewise, with social media, there are huge successes, like the Nike #MakeItCount YouTube campaign that saw Nike’s net profits rise by 18% that year. But, the social media blunders are much more publicized. In fact, there are social media channels that look for blunders as part of their effort to build their audience. Frightened? You probably should be.
For example, there is a reason why comments are turned off on the blog posts on StrangeFarFantastical.com. Most the comments are pure scams, fraud, or illegal/unlawful, at the very least unethical, offers. How can I say this? As I write this blog post, the site is not well known. Even so, if you look at the site statistics (like I do), you will see that our small website gets about 100-150 hacking attempts every day. We get about 10-20 spam emails, even with Captcha turned on for the forms.
Seriously! Every day this happens. This is why we use strong passwords on our accounts. I mean, how many people would ever guess that my admin password for this website is the first 36 characters from the 28th page of the 14th edition of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliette published by Gotcha Press in 1217 translated by Edgar Edgarson. This aside, this is just the security side, which has to be a consideration for social media.
Aside from this, the porn, the trolls, the exploits, and such go on and on. Seriously! It is tiring. There are also more stories of celebrities, brands, influences, and companies failing in big ways with their social media.
This doesn’t even address the rampant cheating. Sure! Sure! I am absolutely positive that <Celebrity XYZ> uses <product/service ABC> because they absolutely love it. Never mind that they were paid <a bajillion dollars> to say they loved it. Why? Because this works. There is low risk and high reward. Or never mind the <Company MNO> that posts false positive reviews from burner accounts about their <product/service ABC> to increase their revenue. Why? Because this works. There is low risk and high reward. Or <Company MNO> that posts false negative reviews from burner accounts about their competitor’s <product/service ABC> to decrease their competitor’s revenue. Why? … Come on! You know! YES! As INCONCEIVABLE as it is, this works. There is low risk and high reward.
Quite frankly, I don’t want to be a part of that sort of business. There are enough ways to truly engage with your customers honestly. There are enough ways for your to hear their concerns and get their feedback.
Then, there are the authors and other creators that go off into politics and religion. YIKES! I was taught, in business school… Thanks Stetson University, that a business, of which an author or creator is one type of business, is in the business of selling things to people. I have enough problems getting my creations to people who think they are good. If I am then being judged by political, religious, gender, cultural, or other divisions, I will likely sell less. Even if I sell less, I will undoubtedly have a more raucous life because of that expressed position. Heck! Even writing this, as safe as it sounds, will have the potential to open me up to ridicule. If it does, it will doubly reinforce that in some engagements there is no winning. All this is just my way of saying that, “What’s the sense of wrestling with a pig? You both get all over muddy… and the pig likes it.” (By the way, this quote is not from Mark Twain or George Bernard.)
Finally, when you start to deal with content ownership, privacy, global laws and regulation it is more of a minefield than you probably recognize.
I engage in social media through blogging and selective comments in various online communities. I do so with my eyes as wide open as I can make them. I think about what I write. I reread what I write before I publish or post it. I am quick to remove it if I failed to adequately express my thoughts. And, I avoid problems by staying out of complex legal and regulatory spaces, or at least as well as I can.
I would encourage you to consider the same. Be smart. Communicate to your audience honestly. Engage with them cautiously. Be aware that social media really doesn’t mean what you think it means until you’ve dug deep enough to truly understand what it can and does mean for you. After all, once you release something on the Internet, it can possibly live far longer than you expect.