I read an article in Wired’s Epicenter from a couple of days ago titled- Gaming the System: How Marketers Rig the Social Media Machine and the article caught my eye for a number of reasons.
The first reason is that when I first “dabbled” in social media 5 years ago-I was that marketer. I was the one gaming the system. Back then, comment spam and server farms did wonders for text based links and I was all over it. But a funny thing happened. I started seeing the conversations. I started paying attention to what was really happening around me. And it was cool. All of a sudden I got it. I had an epiphany. I now understood the real reason why social media was so dynamic and so transformational. I never looked back.
Here’s the second reason the article caught my eye-it was in the opening paragraph.
Regular users of social networks generally collect friends and followers on a one-by-one basis, then use those connections to share their opinions and links to the latest “Double Rainbow” remix or whatever is making the rounds that day.
Before I get to that, let me first offer up that I know that there are lots of good, solid social media consultants and companies who do great work. My problem is I keep bumping into people or companies claiming that they are social media companies or consultants, and yet I have no clue who they are or what they have done; and worse, upon deeper discovery-they don’t even eat their own dog food or drink their own koolaid.
