Category Archives: Rant
Drowning in Mediocrity, Social Media Needs More Feedback
Social media and those who play within the realm continue to believe that their world, while played out in public forums, remains private and exempt from the rules of society. The belief is simple, I’m a private person, my life is my life and outside comment or critique is unwarranted and unfair. This is never more true than when any event is offered suggestions on improvement, any talk reviewed, any tweet argued or any decision publicly condemned, however, for some reason social media continue to propagate a system where providing suggestions is wrong.
Let’s break it down though because we cannot all be so insane as to not recognize the world for how it is, can we?
When a movie comes out, a lot of work has been put into it (good job team!). Lights, sound, acting, directing, writing, are just some of the tasks (and people) who are behind the movie. If it’s not a particularly good movie, it’s necessary to let them know what was wrong – a reviewer steps up and provides his or her insight on why the movie was bad, or good, or both. It’s a job that was incredibly important to us before the internet because it let us know if a movie was worth seeing or not. However, this changed with the development of the internet and sites like IMDB or Rotten Tomatoes, which allows everyone to review things – anonymously. Everyone could voice their opinion without fear of reprisal or counterattack.
Having gotten used to and coddled with the protection of anonymity, we were free to say anything we wanted to anyone without having to show our faces. This is where the problem begins.
Fast-forward to the last few years, where the development of social media has swept the world and marketing departments – where the ‘Social Media Influencer’ has become a staple in social media strategy. Social media changed the web to bring people back into the fold. No longer was “BobFromCanada” who we could interact with – now it was “Zach Bussey from Toronto, here’s his website, what he looks like, what he does, his employment history, his friends, his passions and how he takes his coffee.” All of a sudden, the anonymity we had been using for ten years was erased and now if you wanted to stay ahead of the curve (or use social media to your advantage), you had to be yourself. Social media brought light to darkness and those still hiding in the shadows rightly earned the name ‘Trolls’.
Here’s where the disconnect lies… while we have a new openness and ability to connect with real people, what we refuse to acknowledge is the place for (and necessity of) people who are willing to provide suggestions and ideas on improving. Living a public lifestyle where every shit we take, every place we eat, every thing we see or overhear and every event we plan is blasted out to everyone we know by face or screen name, doesn’t come without a response – and sometimes that response is going to be in the form of honest review. However, we don’t acknowledge the place for this, a place for someone to say: You can do better. You can be better. Here is how… The sentiment is “I deserve praise, that’s it. Any kind of public suggestion is unwarranted. Leave me to do what I do; it’s not your place to comment.” Every other thing in our lives (movies, celebrities, cars, restaurants), we accept the place for reviews and suggestions. When it’s about us though? No thanks!
We need to get it through our thick skulls that without people telling us how we can do better, we’re going to drown in a sea of mediocrity.
Remember this? Thank god for negative feedback!
While the world outside of social media look for ways to improve, and knows how to take criticism, suggestion and ideas by using them to grow, improve and be better… social media people have decided that they aren’t part of the real world. In regards to a recent event that occurred, I asked people who attended what they thought of the event and under the condition of anonymity (there is that word again) they agreed to provide me with their overview – which was overall positive but offered suggestions of improving for next year. In a couple cases, they wanted to remain anonymous for fear of attack. They believed that if they voiced a concern or suggestion that they would be publicly vilified for their ideas. How sad is it that with all this access to people, ideas, and different thoughts, that the majority of us shut our mouths because we fear how the people, organizations or person might respond to our ideas? Sadder still, that there’s clear proof that those who might respond would confirm these fears.
This brings me back to the necessity of providing reviews which point out flaws and provide suggestions on how to fix them, and why we should be encouraging them to speak more. This role, or character trait is NOT an easy one. Constantly under the pressures of polarization – staunch supporters and opponents, there is no middle ground for anyone who wants to see something improve. Either what you say is going to be accepted or vilified. Even if the content of their review is balanced to provide positives and negatives along with ideas on improvement, the people who read will only read it in one way or the other.
Social media, especially, needs more people to stand up and say “Hey, this was a problem, and here’s an idea how to fix it“. With so many mediocre things being sold to businesses under the guise of “Social Media Strategy”, with so many social media events being mediocre, and with so many actions of social media people being mediocre (at best) the room for improvement is massive and should be in greater demand. Or we can just continue to keep our mouths shut and forever accept that we can only be mediocre.
Personally, I refuse to accept that. So please, rather than agreeing with this, give me some suggestions on how I can improve! We’ll both be better off for it.
My Dominican Vacation
From December 27th until January 3rd I was fortunate enough to have gone on a vacation with the family to the Dominican Republic. This was no small trip (22 of us) and because we were going during a very busy time of the year, it was definitely no small expense to organize. Punta Cana is where we stayed at the Majestic Colonial Resort. A 4 1/2 star resort, so they say.
Now, for me this was pretty exciting because it was my first time to a different country than the US. In fact, it was only the 3rd time I’ve been out of Canada… so needless to say I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect. The internet is full of horror stories, enough to instill enough fear in me that I essentially packed an entire pharmacy with me… I wish that was a joke. It’s a damn good thing I trust people more than the internet, because if I did, I would never leave my house. Quite frankly, starring at the wall is actually enjoyable for me. You see, every time I travel I seem to get sick. Vancouver, got a cold. New York, flu that nearly killed me (not literally, but I was with my dad’s asshole bitch ex-girlfriend and her bitch daughter at the time which made it feel like death). Quebec, fevers and debilitating migraines. I’d survive a nuclear war well, my body clearly loves being locked in a bunker.
(Apologies in advance, this post is image heavy. Live vicariously! I’m going to split the trip up into 3 blog posts.) OH! And PS… All the images below were taken with my new Motorola RAZR which I received for being Canada’s Social BLAZR. Truly an incredible camera if you ask me. 8MP photos and 1080P HD video! Click the images to see them in better quality!
Our flight was at 8AM, which meant we had to be up at 4:30AM. Brutal… But after the four hour flight we walk into this…
29C. Sunny and humid. (While there is water on the ground, the only time it rained over the 8 days was at night time on 3 occasions.)
Now… I know that island lifestyle is a little more relaxed than it is in Canada or the US… but we had to wait about an 90 minutes for our bags. Here’s my little brother exhausted from waiting.
Finally they arrived though and we were on our way to the bus and then to the resort where *I* could finally change out of my long sleeve shirt and jeans.
Release the Kraken?
Then we finally arrived at the resort, which was very underwhelming to look at the exterior… but once we stepped inside…
Now at this point it’s about 3PM… our rooms won’t be ready for another 1-2 hours. Brutal. So me and my brother did the only common sense thing, we had our first beer of the day – Presidente is the local beer and it’s actually quite good!
Now, here’s the reality of the Dominican – They don’t care. Everything is very whatever. It doesn’t matter that our group of 22 had spent tens of thousands of dollars, they didn’t care if we had a problem. Here’s what the problem was – when we booked the vacation, we were very specific about a few things. Considering we were travelling with kids, elderly, wheelchairs and our family we needed some of the rooms to be ground floor, close proximity, next door etc. While I didn’t book it, my parents travel agent did and the instructions were very clear on what we needed – we got none of it. Our rooms were all over the place. 4 rooms were in a separate building, our rooms were on different floors and it was just a mess.
Trying to talk to Staff, They Don't Seem to Care
The family spent a couple hours with the front desk trying to remedy this nightmare, to no avail. They didn’t care. They had given our rooms away to others. I’ve learned that in the Dominican, it’s first come first serve.
So, my brother and I get our room key and we go to our room (a 15 minute walk from front desk). Keys don’t work. So we go back to the front desk (another 15 minute walk) and get new keys. We walk back to our room, (15 minutes) still don’t work. So we go back to front desk and tell them… ‘Oh it must be a problem with the door. I’ll send someone.’ How long? ‘Oh, 10 minutes.’ So we go back to our room, double time to meet the person to fix our door (7 minutes)…. 40 minutes later still no one. So walk back to the front desk, furious (15 minutes + exhausted/sweaty). Ask them what’s up, this time they actually radio someone… ‘It will be about 50 minutes.’ WHAT! Ugh. Grab a Cerveza, and 15 minutes back to the room to wait. Finally the guy comes and recodes the door.
“Just need to get new keys from the door and it will open.”
“Okay great. How long will that be till you’re back with the keys?”
“Oh, 15 or 20 minutes.”
“Gracias.”
20 minutes later, no keys… so another 15 minute walk to the front desk to get keys… and finally we’re in our room. At this point it’s about 8PM. We’ve been waiting 3.5 hours to get into our room. No one cares there. You can tip and they still didn’t seem to care. There’s more nightmare stories to tell about the rooms, but I’ll save it for the next blog post. In the meantime, here was the one great part of our room – the view.
Oh and morning Sunrises were incredible. Very different from the yellow, orange, red sunrises we get in Canada. I believe it has something to do with the equator and not having the curve of the earth affecting the sun? Probably also the ocean. Who knows… But morning sunrises were always very dark, and then very suddenly a light blueish colour, followed by this.
Again, this is the first day here… well, actually the first 18 hours. The remaining 7 days I’ll cover in the next two blog posts. So stay tuned!
Also, any similar experiences with All Inclusives not seeming to care?
Notable’s Sponsored Spam
Fresh on the heels of the first ever Notable Awards, for which I called the superfluous awards, I have a new gripe with the curators of Notable young professionals in Canada… this time though, rather than the awards, which obviously required a lot of work and effort, the issue I have is with the ‘love’ I received in my email inbox.
For those who aren’t subscribed, Notable.ca has a newsletter that seemingly is sent out every 5 days with new content. It sometimes has interesting content, sometimes it does not. But what it does do is reminds me of their brand on a regular basis and because it’s not a newsletter packed full of bullshit, I tolerate receiving it so often. Well, that was until I received the latest issue on Monday. Here’s the headline…
My immediate reaction was one of complete frustration. Why the fuck are you all of a sudden selling out your email list to the highest bidder? When did I ever agree to receive some lame sponsored post? But I held my tongue. I realized that maybe the content was actually the same, but that just the title sponsor was there. Boy was I wrong. Instead of the usual Notable ‘You Should Note It’, I get this… and before I go to the image, here’s what it is… it’s an ad. That’s it. A fucking ad. No different than the “You BiggR PENi5 NOW!” emails that I get.
I’ve circled the main problems with this garbage (besides it being ‘Sponsored Love’)…
Gift… Notable has the fucking balls to think that sending me this is a gift. A gift… imagine for one second that your boyfriend or girlfriend said “Merry Christmas baby! I got you a coupon for 20% off!” I’d dump that chick. Also, here’s the disgrace in this… RW&Co MANY TIMES offers 25%, 30% + 50% discounts. The exclusive is less than their standard discounts? How sad! (Source)
$85… I didn’t know there was an RW&Co and quite frankly, if you’re trying to get me to at least try your store, I’m not going to drop $85 on product. You want to get new clients? Don’t put a minimum! It’s a percentage not a set dollar figure. If I spend $1 to get the discount, isn’t that better than me spending no dollars because $85 is too high?
Lastly, RW&Co… have you ever been in their stores? I hadn’t, so I checked it out because I didn’t want to write this without having at least been in their store… Notable?! You think RW&Co is Notable? RW&Co reminded me of a knock off H&M. Do you even know what Notable means?? “Notability is the property of being worthy of notice, having fame, or being considered to be of a high degree of interest, significance, or distinction.” RW&Co is not worthy of notice, it’s not famous and it’s certainly not something with a high degree of interest, significance or distinction.
Quite frankly Notable, this was the most ridiculous sponsored email I’ve received in a while. Good to know that Notable is just a name and not an actual principle with your company though.
Next up, Sponsored Love: Notable Members Only: Walmart has the Hottest Spring Fashions Ever!
PS. Having to wait a day (nevermind 2 weeks) to unsubscribe me from your list is a joke right?
November Brovember… Just not Movember
It’s no secret I’m not a big fan of Movember. I know it’s an unpopular position to take… but god damn I hate mustaches. But not only that, I just don’t understand the connection. What do mustaches and prostate cancer have in common? An example I’ve used in the past is Terry Fox. He lost his leg, and decided to run across the country. That’s heroic.
The funny thing about taking an unpopular position and not being a fan of the movember thing, is that you can say “I support the cause,” over and over again, but no one will listen. They read that my lack of interest in growing nose vomit means that I support cancer in the prostate. Mostly, people are nuts. I’ve come to accept that.
But, maybe I can shake some god damned sense into people. I support curing any cancer. Cancer is the… cancer of the planet. It needs to go away. I would become a celeb autograph whore if it means that cancer would be destroyed. So, for the month of November, I’ve decided to try and raise some money for finding a cure for prostate cancer. No gimmicks, no stupid facial hair. Just raising some money (perhaps from the other people who hate mustaches).
So please help me reach my goal of raising $250 using GoFundMe below!
Social Media Influencers Suck
The Social Media Influencer is a new concept that has only recently become a term to describe a group of people that marketers and/or public relations people can attempt to exploit to their perceived advantage. The problem with this, and what marketing and public relations firms will realize very quickly is that – Social media influencers suck.
I’m about to let you into the mind of a typical social media influencer, the patterns they exhibit, the reason they exist in the social media world and what their general beliefs are towards brands, marketers and public relations pitches. I’m going to lay everything out on the table for you and let you make up your own mind. I can speak with some certainty though because, well, I’ve been considered a social media influncer for a while now. I also know many people in marketing and PR and have heard their nightmare stories about failed campaigns or ones gone wrong. Not only that, I also know essentially ALL the other social media influencers within the Toronto market and have had long conversations with most about this topic.
These same people are bound to disagree with what I’m about to lay out for you, and it’s due to self preservation – we don’t want it to end. It’s also why there has been a ton of hyperbole in blogs lately.
1. The Mind of a Social Media Influencer
The mindset of a typical influencer is pretty basic: we want invites, products and services. We feel we deserve it because of what we do after receiving it – we blog, tweet and share it on Facebook. Our blog readers read it, our thousands of followers on Twitter see it and our close friends on Facebook listen to what we say. Simply stated, we give you access to the people we know, and we’re giving it to you rather cheaply.
The Problem? The more we get, the more entitled we become. The more we demand. The more we expect. With little to no oversight as to what we do after the fact, we can blog/tweet/facebook and our end of the deal is done. Oh, you didn’t see any results, sales, visits to your site? Not our problem.
2. The Patterns
The patterns of a typical social media influencer are pretty apparent – whoever can hook us up is who matters until 24 hours or less after the event or product is received. We’re only interested in one thing – FREE! Most of us don’t actually care about your product, event or service. We hold no loyalties to your brand. You are the flavour of the day and as soon as our ‘contract’ is done, you’re out the door. (I’ve only recently broken this pattern – I’m loyal to my friends at @FordCanada and my beer buds at @CarlsbergCanada. Other imported beers and truck companies need not apply) This is why you’ll see us blog about the car Toyota lent us one day, the one that Honda lent us the next, the one that GM lent us a week later, and the one that Ford lent us. Each of them has the best cars ever – and we love them so much (as long as they are willing to give us another one soon?)
3. Our Raison D’Etre
We exist for a reason, and it matches the pattern – FREE! Sure, we’re more than willing to tweet about your event as long as you have free foods and booze – oh and it sure as hell better be open bar! If it’s only two drink tickets, we’re going to bitch and moan about that. We like to drink… on your buck! We swear to god, if we show up at your event and you make us pay? We’re going to be PISSED about how cheap you are! You want us to write about your stupid product and pay for it?! What the hell do we look like? Normal suckers who buy that stuff in stores? Gimme a break. If you want us to write about you, you better be compensating our buzz, our stomachs, our tech gear or our wardrobe, otherwise you’re no good to us.
4. Beliefs about Brands, Marketers + PR Pitches
Generally, we know you guys have a whole bunch of money and you’re just looking for some people with influence to talk about you. We know you’re not going to ask us to actually deliver any minimum results – as long as we try, that’s good enough for you. Thank god, because to be honest, we’re not sure if we could actually drive traffic to your site. We also know you don’t really do much research into us, because if you did, you’d know we just blogged about your competitor last month, and another 6 weeks ago, and another 2 months ago.
Heh, switchers like us aren’t really the best spokespeople for your product because after two or three competitors – people just don’t listen to us like they first did. BUT, we should be able to get you a dozen or so followers on Twitter, maybe some Likes on Facebook. But as influencers, we’re just here to try out your product! Ironically, if you just gave out the cellphones, tickets, freebies and products yourself to the people who actually buy it, it would probably spread more online and with better results – one’s you can actually gauge well. But please, keep em coming – we love it!
5. Why We Suck
We’re social media influencers and we influence people. But, the people we typically influence are other social media influencers. We all go to the same parties to hang out, we all tweet the same things at these same parties, and we all blog the same things (just with different pictures of ourselves).
We suck though because people who aren’t invited… the jerks who are just social media people and have no influence who you hope will listen to us and buy the product, service or attend the event… well they dislike us because we get all the invites while they get nothing. We sometimes extend the invites to those people and let them be in our awesome company at the super mega awesome events… but most of the time, they have to sit at home and live vicariously… and vicarious is losing the ‘ar’ and now they are just vicious.
Basically, we would never buy your product. You’re giving it to us for free, so why would we? And if we run out, we’ll just ask you for more OR a competitor will come in and give us theirs and that will be our new favourite. We only go to your events if there’s free food, but especially if there’s free booze! Open bar! If there isn’t, fat chance we stick around longer than it takes to consume those two drinks. But don’t worry, we’ll blog it all… someone might read it and be jealous about the good time we had – but they likely won’t buy either. And those who we do influence? They got the same invite and the same products, so there goes that one… Leaving us with the inferior non-influencers… Well, they’re getting more and more bitter because it’s the same 4 dozen of us invited everywhere, while they are forced to just watch from the sidelines. We suck. It’s pretty obvious. We just can’t believe you haven’t realized it yet.
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The question, “why would I bite the hand that feeds?” is bound to come up. It has nothing to do with resentment or my own bitterness. I’m getting more invites and offers than ever. The reason is simple - I think we can do better! For too long we’ve been given a silver spoon for which we could base careers on. The problem is, I, formerly, (we collectively) are just looking for a handout. Bloggers talk about a product once, and never remember them again. We can, and SHOULD do better.
As a new media, if we as bloggers and influencers want to be treated and taken seriously with bigger and better offers to get our ‘influence’ on the public, we need to act, behave and perform seriously. We can’t keep the status quo! We need to deliver results. Deliver return on the investment put into us. We should not be a roll of the dice, a gamble. We may not always succeed, but we need to be held accountable, both for our great successes (so we can learn what works) and our failures (so we can learn what doesn’t). If we don’t… like all media, whether it’s TV, Radio, Print or Web – we’ll be canceled. We suck… let’s be better!
To the Brands, Marketers and PR folks… this is also a request to you to break the mold. Deal with new people. Invite everyone. VIP should be VIP. Work with people who care. Develop long term relationships with bloggers rather than short term – zero/low return one offs. Develop brand loyalty with actual buyers rather than switchers/deal/freebie seekers. Give feedback to bloggers about the success or failure of their posts. You’re the initial gatekeepers, so start using that to your advantage. We need to work together – for our benefits and yours. The path to success isn’t a one time event, it’s ongoing and long term – why should marketing/PR be any different? We suck… we can be better!
