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Social Media and Public Relations Ideas and Insights From David Parmet
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Setting Our Sights A Bit Higher

Started by David Parmet · 6 months ago

It started in July when Shel Israel asked if “social media (is) becoming a vast wasteland?”
There seems to be a growing sense that social media just ain’t what it used to be that it too, is starting to emerge as yet another wasteland for product pushers ... Continue reading »

10 comments

  • Adam Zand

    9 months ago

    Kudos to you! I like this idea of re-direction.

    As always, I worry if we're leaving folks behind - whether that's on social networks, SoMe tools or basic broadband access and education.

    I'm actually more looking forward to the next generation teaching us about social media. To do that we need to make Internet access and tech/math/communication education as close to a human right as possible. That can happen if there is pressure on school systems, corporations and local/national politicians to make it so.

    Until that happens, I fear that the SoMe community (and occasional echo chamber) will think about "how do we save the world" for a little while longer, Then human nature suggests we will move back to the latest shiny object in social media and look out for number 1. Especially true in this economic downturn.

    I can play the cynic with the best of them, but I really do want to see how SoMe can support positive social change.
    Keep up your energy level and help us see and reach that potential.
    reply
  • Brian Oberkirch

    9 months ago

    My mancrush for you just torqued up a notch. Meet me at the train station, stud?
    reply
  • David Parmet

    9 months ago

    Adam - I don't worry about leaving PR and marketing peeps behind. If they haven't figured this all out already, they won't. I agree with you about the schools (I have two in school and one we homeschool) and about the attention span of the SM community.

    Brian - just call me Senator....
    reply
  • Ryan Anderson

    9 months ago

    I couldn't agree more. Social media has a huge potential that's simply not being met, and we're not going to change the world telling people at a social media conference how great social media is.

    I'm teaching a class in entrepreneurship in January, and social media is going to be a large part of it, both in how it works, and what the broader social implications are - how it's affecting charitable efforts, research and the worldwide sharing of ideas.

    My head is definitely going to be in this space in the next few months coming up to the class, but if you figure out how to fix the planet in the meantime, I'd love to hear it.
    reply
  • Marc Meyer

    9 months ago

    Having just seen the echo manifest itself on a larger scale at the web 2.0 expo in NYC. I'm all for taking off the me-too fucking glasses and seeing a new approach to everything that is associated with SM.

    OK, all right already, most of us get it. Why? because we sit around and re-hash it, over think it, and we talk about it, and talk about it some more, and then we pat each other on the back and wonder why others don't get it.

    They don't get it because we AREN'T talking to them. We're just talking to ourselves. It's like we're stuck in an elevator. The people that we follow on twitter, the people that read our blogs, those are OUR peeps. Wanna know why the conversation is getting tiresome? There's your answer.

    We all might as well wait for the timer to go off and pull the fries out of the oil, because thats how mundane it's getting talking about the same shit, and recreating the same app, or same site, over and over and over again.

    I'm all for taking this in another direction. I don't care who drives. Let's just fucking go.
    reply
  • Adam Zand

    9 months ago

    We're on the same page - I'm not worried about PR and Marketing. Lots are doing a great job of screwing up the potential of social media as just another channel to push their clients/messages and self.

    I'm talking about people in under-served communities who don't have access to broadband and basic education.

    Love Marc's view on this and I'm glad I skipped the recent cheerleader conferences in NYC and Las Vegas. Most of the pictures and tweets reeked of excess and Internet bubble 2.0. Actually, I take that back, I would've loved to been in Vegas ;).

    As some on this comment stream know, in Boston we're following the launch of www.sm4sc.com @sm4sc (Social Media for Social Change) and its founder Gradon Tripp. He's brand new to this effort and approach, but it really just takes one passionate person who gives a s*it to make a difference.
    reply
  • tomhiggins

    9 months ago

    At the end of the day it is not so much how you got here but where your here is, who it is populated by and what you are doing (alone or in colab).

    Twitter, irc, forums, im, lists, blogs, qwks, wikis, usenet, morse code...are all means to and ends. Too often the method has become the message, the wow factor of the brand new jimmies the thing that get leveraged over the content being tossed around.

    If what you are reading/writing all sounds mundane and rehashed then odds are you are, probably, not in a place with a group of participants that will make you feel any better about what is being done, let alone what gizmos are facilitating it being done.

    Is it all sound and fury signifying monkeys? Is life a series of rotating praxis with a sales pitch or convention as its main draw...seriously how many damn industry driven events do folks want to fly to in a given year simply to collect a t shirt and gobag that will be forgoten in a pile in a year or two?

    Save the world? Does it need saving and if so will it be the New Cyber X-men powered by Intel that will do it, or will it be the mass lumpen of latent soylent green that schlumps westward? Can memeatic incursions spring from enclaves of dinkum thinkum? Oh heck yea. Can they be forced on the populace for a desired effect? Historic evidence shows marketing has a powerful hand in playing those out. Again though I bring us back to the mass lumpen who for better or worse are the body that the memes move.

    Now you could go all Harry Seldon and devise the ways to take the trends, the mass lumpen behaviors and harness them in subtle ways to shift the plot lines...

    I digress though from the point at hand and that is The (current method of communicating) Sucks..Long Live the Next New Thing..sure sure...but content....as they said many times over, content is king (or queen...do not want to get tilted by the genders)

    So...no matter what your reading/writing... Hold it up to a metric of Content rather than Use Of Praxis. Does it's center hold in that light? Experiment, sure..but to an ends.

    Else wise, you have become much as the model rail guys with a basement packed with a stunningly beautiful recreation of a quaint village and surrounding landscape where in all the people move in rutted predetermined motions, the lights all come on with a click of the timer, the trains all run on time every time ....and yes it is gorgeous and yes it is a work that will take you years to unfold and yes you will learn a vocabulary of the scene and it will go....in the same path...over and over and over and over.

    Toot Toot Chuga Chuga (big red car)

    Where do you want to go today? What tracks are you on?

    -tomhiggins
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  • Dan Thornton

    9 months ago

    I agree.

    Although social media is still pretty rare amongst most companies, most of the ways to use it are fairly obvious after five minutes of playing with it. Be human, honest, transparent and invest time and effort.

    But what's really needed is the life-changing stuff. The stuff that helps people live a better life, or changes the national economy - that's going to be more effective at changing individuals and companies than another half-hearted Facebook fan page!
    reply
  • Gregory Gerhardt

    9 months ago

    Hi David

    There is a whole new generation of platforms evolving, empowering the Web to become a more constructive, productive place - including our start-up amazee.com. Also Check out Socialactions.com - a Montreal based platform that is creating a search interface that consolidates all "social actions" of the associated platforms like bringlight.org, change.org etc. So there are things happening and there's definitely more to come :)
    reply
  • Ari Herzog

    9 months ago

    That sounds like a challenge, David, and one I'm ready to accept. However, as I evangelize the benefits of social media to my peers and their parents, I point them to my blog and other online sources and they are bewildered at the potential power, having never ventured beyond their email inboxes or sporadic news sites and eBay transaction boards.

    So, the questions can't be rejected. Perhaps what is needed is a re-focused amplification of the cowbell.
    reply

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