The Stupidest Article About Social Media Ever

By Kevin H. Nalty

September 32, 2009

Social media is changing the entire universe, and someone might have sent you thisarticle because you “don’t get it.”I have no specific credentials to write about social media, but I did some Googlesearches 30 minutes ago and now I’m calling myself an expert. Since social media isnew, you’ll have a hard time refuting that claim.Let me start by plagiarizing Wikipedia’s definition of social‐media because I’m toolazy to paraphrase it or actually read it.

Social media are media designed to be disseminated through social interaction, created using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques. Social media supports the human need for social interaction, using Internet- and web-based technologies to transform broadcast media monologues (oneto many) into social media dialogues (many to many). It supports the democratization of knowledge and information, transforming people from content consumers into content producers. Businesses also refer to social media as user-generated content (UGC) or consumer-generated media (CGM).

Hopefully by the time you read this, the editors at Wikipedia haven’t changed it.A few other people have written about social media, but it’s like Robert Scoble says,“That’s the first lesson: even though you probably are getting sick and tired of hearing about something… the reality is that most of your friends haven’t evenheard the news yet.”I quotedRobert Scoblebecause it gives this article credibility, and, quite frankly, Idon’t read his blogosphere so I just grabbed that quote from his most‐recent post about his new baby. Scoble’s worldwide website is available if you click that underlined blue thing over his name. He works for Microsoft or something.It’s time for a gratuitous and recent statistic to substantiate what I’m saying.According to Hitwise/Experian, “Twitter is now the 26th ranked website visited byAustralian Internet users (week ending 5 September 2009).” There’s probably abetter quote than that, but it’ll do. It’s current.

People moved from MySpace to Facebook, and now they’re all on Twitter. Prettysoon there will be a new important website that I’ll hopefully convince someone topay me to monitor and fix. Your company needs a Facebook and Twitter account orit will lose its relevancy and go out of business fast. I can’t stress that enough.This is the sentence where I differentiate myself from those hyping social media byindicating that I know what’s coming in the future and how it will matter tocompanies. Actually, I’m going to go ahead and save that part for a follow‐on articlecalled “stupidester.”What follows

is a list

that you could title using any of the following: top ten sins,commandments, rules, failures, success stories, case studies, ROI, metrics or results.1.

Be transparent 2.

Moving slowly3.

Drives measurable ROI4.

SkittlesCompanies that “get” social media usually have a head of social media. I’m actuallywriting this article in hopes that someone at a conference will offer me that job.They’ll probably be impressed with this article, and maybe not notice that I didn’t actually publish it… but just slapped a logo on top. I found the logo while searchingGoogle images for “fake newspaper logo.”

I’ve decided this article has too many words, so I’m going to use a piece of clip art to demonstrate my next point.

This picture demonstrates the measurable ROI that comes from social‐mediastrategy and tactics. I hope you’re impressed that I started with a random image Ifound in clip art… and then backed into that meaning. Not everyone can do that.In conclusion, social media is changing the entire universe, and your companyshould have a Facebook or Twitter account or it will lose its relevancy and go out of business fast.