The Tendo View

The birth of Google Buzz into the grand cacophony of social updates that is the modern-day Web is nothing special—not unless you want it to be. And you should want it to be.  There’s a special place in Internet Hell reserved for those who connect their social networks together in one almighty amalgam of real-time updates.

As a marketer, I respect and appreciate the need to stay on message and deliver viewpoints across all the places an audience lurks. And as a Tendo editor (and Web site admin), I realize that we do this very thing on our own platform—anything that gets posted to the Tendo View gets automatically updated to our respective Twitter feed. So am I just as guilty of feeding the flames of social media as my online friends, who have managed to port everything they do across every Web platform they subscribe to?

Not really.

The difference here is that I’ve recognized the value of Twitter as its own communications platform—essentially, its own entity. Think of the service as a little lemonade stand and Tendo’s updates as the fresh, yellow ingredients. Increasing the amount of available lemons doesn’t hurt the stand. In fact, it might even help the fledgling business attract some new customers.  That’s the business of social media—a network of portals that receive content that others can use to connect and form relationships, both with you and amongst themselves.

Would I want my lemonade stand to suddenly partner up with the lemonade stand on the other side of the street? No. I wouldn’t call them the enemy per se, nor even the competition. Even though we have the same ingredients, it’s apples and oranges. Perhaps I’m fueling up the schoolchildren who exit the nearby elementary school, whereas the other lemonade stand is offering double-sized portions for the firefighters who wash their trucks every day at 4 p.m. I could get into this huge capitalistic description of why it would be excellent for one lemonade stand to rethink its business strategy to attract new customers and such, but this is a metaphor and these are lemonade stands: They are independent, period.

Lemonade, the Social Web, and You

It’s long-winded, but my little simulated scenario (likely brought on from playing too much Lemonade Tycoon on my iPhone) is an accurate description of the Web’s  current social offerings. For simplicity’s sake, let’s consider the Big Three: Facebook, Twitter, and the upstart Google Buzz. Post whatever you want to each source—that’s not the issue here. The problem arises for users who blindly post the exact same content on each platform or, worse, link the three such that anything posted to one gets automatically duplicated to all.

Here’s why. Each platform caters to a different audience—one that subscribes to a particular interest based on a given need. My Facebook friends are just that: my friends. I list enough personal details to make me a bit loathe to allow random strangers into this personal hub of my life. By the same token, I extend these friends the same courtesy of not having to read through all the different articles I’ve written and subsequently promoted on other social platforms. I don’t post very frequently on Facebook to avoid burdening my friends with inane details that they probably don’t want to hear about; Twitter, however, obviously gets these updates, and I’ll friend anyone with a pulse in a vain attempt to increase my own social standing on the Internet.

Buzz, the ugly duckling, is a strange beast. Ignoring for a moment the launch-day privacy issues that allowed anyone under the sun to follow what I said (hello, work contacts!), there’s nothing that irritates me more than having a Buzz feed that’s been overpopulated with the exact same information that’s already available on other platforms. No, I do not need Buzz Tweets; no, I do not want Buzz Facebook updates. It’s a different medium, a different playing field, and those running around on it should realize the value it brings rather than trying to mindlessly transform it into yet-another-[social network of your choice]-clone.

This is the real gist of conversational marketing: Identifying when and where the very act of conversation can and should take place. Marketing can’t be a carpet-bomb that relies on the copied content to blast an audience into submission. Though they might appear similar at first glance, each online platform embodies real strengths in its setup and the psychographic profiles of its users. If you fail to recognize this, you risk annoying your audience with improper messaging for their online lifestyles. Or, in layman’s terms, don’t turn your conversations into a total buzz-kill.