The BS around ‘conversations’ and social media

There isn’t a dearth of social media experts nowadays. Their key target audience logically are the CEOs and CMOs who control the purse strings on marketing spends. Since social media and technology is unfamiliar territory for many, it is natural to look for people who can guide them through it. The byproduct of all this is a lot of jargon, BS and drivel.  It isn’t just from the experts – there are several others in the business, on the periphery who want to come across as knowledgeable about the topic. All this came alive in a recent article in AdAge (subscription required) where the commenters were hell bent on out-jargoning the author. As one commenter lucidly said:

…what brands should strive to do is build a lattice or framework for the conversation that they ultimately want to occur. Then when they feed in the consumers it will grow into the shape they planned out.”

Ok, got that. How about this one?

“First, by socializing all media, the engagement experience is cyclical and ongoing. Second, by identifying conversation groups (social graphs) and tapping directly into them and then connecting them together, the long tail of niche market segments become your mass or ‘mainstream’ media play.”

Simple enough – wonder why more marketers aren’t practicing this? Every industry has it’s share of jargon mongers. The ones around social media have found a place in the sun recently. I can only take solace in New Yorker’s advice: ‘If you already have a blog, make sure you spray-feed your URL in niblets open-face to the skein. We like Reddit bites (they’re better than Delicious), because they max out the wiki snarls of RSS feeds, which means less jamming at the Google scaffold’. Amen.

Post inspired but by no means close to the genius of The Ad Contrarian.