I Don't Want A Social Media Relationship With My Hard Drive
By Tom Foremski - May 14, 2009
My social media world is all a twhirl about corporate social media marketing. It's probably because I have a lot of contacts in marketing and communications.
And there are a gazillion social marketing "experts" out there hawking social media marketing strategies to corporations.
This is a mistake. Corporations are not people. They are made by people, and people work there, but they aren't people.
A while ago Seagate, the hard drive company, asked me to be its friend on Facebook. Then it asked me to be a "fan." I use Seagate so I clicked yes both times to see what was up. But do I really want a social relationship with my hard drive? No.
I interact with a 100 different brands throughout my day. If they all jump onto the social media bandwagon what happens then? Am I going to check out the Facebook status of my toothpaste? Will I wonder what parties my microprocessor is going to tonight? Hey, my jeans just uploaded some new vacation photos.
I don't want to socially interact with my hard drive or my dishwashing liquid. Managing social relationships is tough enough, I certainly don't want to do it with my products. I just want them to sit quietly and not engage with them. I paid for them, now I just want them to sit there and be inanimate. Don't send me emails, Twits, or try to engage with me. Thank you.
Same for adverts. There's a ton of jabber about "engaging" advertising. I don't want to engage with adverts, either. I don't want to engage with products. I like to engage with people.
I don't want to be harsh on Seagate or other brands. These are all very early days and I like to see people experimenting and seeing what works. There is a way for corporations to interact with social media but it's not the way it's being done so far.
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Comments (3)
Lame attempts in anthropomorphizing a corporation won't work on most people, but it's always nice to know that someone at your hard drive manufacturer or toothpaste maker is available online to answer questions or offer recommendations should YOU want to engage THEM. I see Twitter providing a streamlined medium for that. Facebook? Not so much, unless your company's products or services are well suited to a cult of personality (Apple, Nike, Zappos, etc.).
Posted: May 14, 2009 4:05 PM
Kawika: Good point. Good customer service. But, I have a feeling that it's easy to get a quick response on say Twitter, because it's still a relatively small number of people to monitor. Once it gets bigger, then we'll be waiting in line online, just the same as we do on the phone.
Posted: May 14, 2009 5:48 PM
I applaud your candid appraisal of the corporate rush to all things social media. You have tapped into the heart of the issue - relevance. Can companies find the right mix for this new social outreach so their content and avenues of communicating are meaningful and relevant to the end-user?
Posted: May 15, 2009 8:35 AM