<rant> The sheer propensity of mainstream humans to congregate in targetable, virulent, and roaming electronic social packs has resulted in spawning a beautiful new breed of working class public relations heroes: “The Social Media Czars.”
A social media Czar is a true, brilliant, and presumably selfless influencer whose authority was born out of peoples’ revolt, acute intuition, and holistic intent. Nobody questions him or her. Nobody would dare question them. The problem is that some (not all) social media power brokers are mob-bred mercenaries who are at least partially full of shit.
Exemplary Citizens
It’s true. The social media Czar first earned his (or her) stripes by respectfully lurking amongst the sweaty common folk for months. Upon entry in a new community he/she learns what content cranks the crowd, contributes (starting slowly), and lovingly gives (& gives & gives) LONG before asking for anything in return.
It takes countless hours, days, weeks, and months. There is no paycheck and it might be hard to make rent. No worries…knowing the community is stronger is more than payment enough. The awesome authority a social media Czar attains is earned by nearly full-time free work, the most noble of community oriented endeavors. Jesus would be so proud.
Love, Peace, Integrity, Selflessness
The social media Czar promotes content, which ostensibly is NEVER self serving, sports a downright holistic demeanor, and zealously trumpets the sacred Innocence of “community.” This cat has serious and impeccable integrity so he/she never has to ask other kitties for votes. That wouldn’t be cool. Meow-the wisdom of the pussy mob has anointed him/her Czar, unselfish and anarchistic anti-ruler of everyone and nobody…a king or queen who claims no need for gold in exchange for benevolent rulership and the sanctity of human connection.
Be True 2 Your School
The community members that adore and follow social media Czars TOTALLY hate marketers, with good reason. It makes sense. As a group, marketers tend to screw up anything good to make a buck. “If someone builds it, someone will spam it.” Diggers and Stumblers shout from bully pulpits that the sacred mob should be able to submit, vote, and bookmark in peace. The Czar speaks out against diluting the community ethic with insensitive would-be marketing invaders. The holy wisdom of the mob prevails.
BUZZER: WHAT’S WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE?
My only question is how the hell do Mr. and Ms. Social media Czar earn a living if they don’t promote content for money now that they’re rock stars? What value do they bring to their big-city-fancy search marketing agency jobs if they are NOT working to build links for companies that can afford their services? Are their salaries charitable contributions to support the electronic evolution of planet earth?
Please explain how corporations can buy the 200 or so good links a hot Diggity dog story can bring for between $3000 and $5000 from an interactive marketing agency employing a top 100 digger? How can the profession of “link baiter for hire” even exist in this happy horseshit world of benevolent flower power espousing kitty cats?
Who has time to sit around all day and cast 20,000 votes without ever having a hope of personal gain-ever? Why do search marketing professionals give a rat’s ass about growing authority social profiles if there can NEVER be a personal or professional gain for their clients?
How do the most famous diggers of all time build companies that earn millions annually if they are NOT using their personal social media connections to further advertising objectives? Why do some of the most famous Diggers in history publicly advocate masking one’s search marketing identity on Digg and StumbleUpon to the stealthy ends of achieving covert marketing objectives to the mob’s wisdom? What’s all this talk about “personas” and why do they work so well?
Let’s Skip the Earth Mama Junk
Some of the most thought provoking questions we’re asked at speaking engagements and from clients are in regards social media’s elusive gold. Sites like Facebook, StumbleUpon, Digg, mySpace, YouTube, Del.icio.us, and micro-community sites sure look like big fat juicy commercial ducks, to hunt, kill, and eat. It makes sense. Anywhere folks congregate to use free tools, they should be fair game.
That said, the social media Czars are TOTALLY 100% right. The only true way to gain long-lasting authority on any social media site is by whole heartedly participating from an unselfish stance. The Tao of social media marketing is that brilliant social media marketing folks know how to hold their holistic community-serving postures and traffic content that both serves the community AND furthers marketing objectives.
Tell The Whole Story Or I’m Going to Puke
Social media Czars have earned the right to be extremely well paid and available for hire…in fact they are, making their rising-to-hip-wader-level of open source, love your kitty cat, eat apple pie, and never-sin-by-self-motivated-article-submissions-rhetoric NAUSEATING to say the least. It’s getting a little deep out there.
Are you court jester or king dude/dudette? We kneel before the gilded throne of the hypocritical social media Czar. Here’s a clue: It’s TOTALLY OK to make tons of money helping clients market to social communities. However, if the other side of your mouth is all about butterflies, little birdies, social media religion, and granola bars, I humbly request that you share the rest of the story-how you exploit your precious community brethren to serve your corporate clients for cash. 🙂
</rant>
Sounds to me like you are gagging to be a Czar yourself Marty! Like you I just sit on the touchline and watch this develop. I agree the prospect of making bucks is what drives most of us to spend so much time in front of a screen. I also agree that marketing is getting itself a bad name through splogging. When we look back on history I am sure it will all be part of a plan to get somewhere, maybe Web 2.0 will have taken over the world 🙂
Unlike the early Internet Web 2.0 is all about making money. Most of the Web 2.0 companies are based on User Generated Content (UGC) created by the user so saying that self-exploitation for free for all those companies should be strictly a mo’ pain no gain kind of giving up on yourself and your precious time is downright crazy.
Nobody would work for free for a profit oriented company in real life, yet we all do for the likes of Google (YouTube etc.), Digg, Yahoo (Flickr, del.icio.us) or eBay (StumbleUpon).
So people advocating exploitation on web 2.0 platforms are your enemies, not the marketers who try to make some sense out of all the work you do for those companies.
Pingback: SEO 2.0 | Why Social Media is Like Slavery and SMO Equals Abolitionism
Very nice post that summarizes the core issue I think. All those social network companies were made “for profit” and we should make no mistakes about it.
I only think it’s upsetting that they allow so much power to be concentrated in hands of the few zealots, many of whom have nothing outside of that network. Their power ego kills the progress itself
“Gagging” LOL! 🙂 I can honestly say that I am not in social media for the money. The other areas of our agency practice are lucrative enough. I’m a total social media addict and have to monitor my time because I’d be happy to twitter my days away for free…cause I love people and community SO much.
That said we DO make plenty of money, marketing with blogs, on SU, Digg, YouTube and other sites but we NEVER evangelize the religion of community participation as some sacred cow-or cut down others for trying to organize their friends earn a buck. So long as the content servers the community appropriately who cares? So long as the mob loves the show…who cares?
We talk about the WHOLE game…to serve both the community’s AND the advertisers’ need. We are gatekeepers too, never allowing crap into the communities we love…and don’t get me wrong…I LOVE SU. I LOVE Digg. I LOVE Sphinn.
Making money is cool. Social media religion is cool. Just tell both sides of the story from the same side of your mouth from the bully pulpit. I like the way Neil Patel talks about things. He is protective about being appropriate in the community…and also teaches us how to make money.
I’m really glad I wasn’t taking a drink when I read that line.
My background is mostly in content management systems. Even in those communities, you see a lot of the same things as you described and, yes, there are plenty of Czars.
Great post Marty!
Awesome post marty, had me hooked from beginning to end
Thanks Glen :). J, I’m glad you found the post humorous enough to spray your drink, if the conditions had been right. He He.
Pingback: Social Media Contributor - Exploitation or Internship? « The Uncanny Broadcasting Brain Blog
Pingback: The Shroud of Bullshit often Surrounding Social Media « Andrew A. Peterson and Ramping Up
Pingback: From Geek to Gods: Why Have "Social Rock Stars" Emerged? | Social Media Trader
Funny thing is I ignore these people and typically go the opposite if what ever they have to say. I like what I like and I don’t worry too much about what others like. This is classic sheep being led off to the slaughter. Sure there are occasions where what I like coincides but I never take anyones word for it and large crowds of people hitting up on something typically make me skeptical as large groups of people tend to be largely stupid.
This site is super nice, we love it!!
as for the “other site”…:
Newsvine breaks the law of the Constitution of the United States: the first amendment of free speech.
They censor what they don’t like, especially when it’s the truth.
Soon there will be a class action lawsuit taking them down.
Often, when I hear the term “social media” the hair on my back rises. I think Wikipedia or the likes or any originally idealistic project eventually taken over by a mob and turned into a “dictatorship of the proletariat”.
If we’ve learned anything from the social media that have gone before it is that “it’s difficult to make good projects work well and it’s easy to make idealistic ones turn into hell”. I would personally be very wary of any tool built on non-exclusive participation.
I know, that sounds elitist and elitist is bad in pop culture. But most social media concepts are based upon an idealistic view that everyone will be equal and have the same amount of input. Where there are humans, this is rarely if ever the case.
Some social media are like a ponzy scheme in terms of their “added value” to each individual networking participant.
The network owner and managers gain some value from the existance and growth of the network only because they were first or “founders”. But their interests are not equal to those of the “downline” network participants who they usually do not allow to exploit the network for any real gain. In fact, there is a conflict of interest between the networking participants and the network “founder” or owner.
Networkers are attracted to the network by promises of considerable personal gain, usually through the great publicity and brand created by an ever increasing body of users.
NEWSVINE,
What is up with the people at Newsvine. My god what jerks they are. Someone by the name of Sally Chamberlin, pulled the plug on me. She told me that I was PERMANENTLY DISABLED. I have asked Sally several times to let me know what I did or said that was so bad. I never even got a warning. What ever I said , someone did not like hearing the truth . What ever happened to free speech? Only in America. I do not like it. It is just plane wrong to ban someone from speaking or writing freely.