Stop doing the same presentation.

Social media has built a cottage industry of self promoting pseudo experts. We all hate them. We all hate them to the point where, each one of you is thinking of a specific person who you think I’m talking about. That person? They hate social media douchebag guru ninjas, too.

So, it’s a problem, yes?

I’ve found a simple identifier: if you can hear someone giving the same presentation, the same advice, and the same examples, more than 6 months apart, they are likely terrible at what they do.

They need to stop giving the same presentation.

They are teaching you social media 101, using last year’s assistant profs notes, and a photocopied version of an out of date textbook.

This is a changing space. Rapidly changing. Massively changing.

And while I would never suggest everything new is relevant, even if google shoehorns it into search results at a baffling level, it is usually worth understanding.

Someone who is still stopping at “listen before you talk”, or “it’s about brand love” is still talking about 3 or 4 years ago. When this was still new enough that there wasn’t data. When this was still new enough that you had to convince clients it was important, rather than convincing them that they need more of a strategy than “we need to be on social media”.

The dummies books have been written. Repeatedly. You don’t have to keep preaching the gospel of “I understood twitter in 2008”.

Instead, a few polite suggestions:

Get some f**king data, to back up your assertions.

Stop pretending it’s simple. It’s only simple if you aren’t optimizing it. Expertise isn’t about stopping at simple.

Things are (always) different. Examples more than 6 months old are likely no longer representative of the current platform and community dynamics.

“Entry level” changes. If you’re giving the same ‘how to get started in social’ advice today, that you were giving even a year ago, you’re a fraud. Pick a new scam, please.

You can’t be a revolutionary after the war is won. You’ve either decided to become a productive member of post war society, or you’ve ended up unable to let go of the fight.

So either grow up with the rest of us, or pick a new fight.

Possibly the dumbest thing I will read today.

“As part of an experiment for my forthcoming book Brandwashed, I lined up 20 babies between the ages of 14 and 20 months. I then handed each one a BlackBerry. No sooner had their soft chubby fists reached out to take the phone from me than they touched the screen expecting it to light up. When nothing happened, a few stuck it in their mouths whilst others moved on to something more interesting.

These babies, all under two years old, have already been converted to the Apple brand.”

-What Apple Babies Reveal About Our Tech Routines, Martin Lindstrom

What baffles me about this is: had the writer never seen a baby that wasn’t exposed to Apple products? Or a pre-iPhone baby?

Children (and, in fact, everyone) react to stimuli. When a baby touches an iPhone screen, or any screen, it’s because IT MIGHT DO SOMETHING, and touching is a form of interaction.

Children also squeeze toys, and get excited when they make a noise.

If you wanted to argue that the way a child reacts to iOS devices indicates that people crave responsiveness on an intrinsic level, that might make sense.  Saying children under 2 have been converted to the Apple brand because a non-responsive phone ends up abandoned is just an embarrassing, illogical leap.

On QR Codes.

QR codes are a sloppy hack.

By which I mean, QR codes attempt to confront the serious issue of building a digital experience that interacts directly with physical reality, and valiantly fail.

(I do not like QR codes.)

The most common use of QR codes is to kick to a URL. Letting people do this by snapping a photo makes sense, but so does a short, memorable URL. Or a series of well thought out search ad buys.

QR codes would still be the better solution, assuming they pushed the user to a meaningful, mobile optimized experience. Even then, the experience would need to have utility related to the environment it would be accessed - standing next to a poster.

Otherwise search or URL is still likely a better approach.

But my core issue with QR codes it this: because creating the code is low-to-no-cost, people use it mostly to create inferior digital experiences.

The most common use I see in the wild is pushing to a standard site, or a non-mobile-formatted contest site. And I understand why: someone says ‘we need a digital element’, and there’s no budget left, and…

But it’s garbage. It’s the same garbage that happened when agencies and corporations first became aware of social, saw that facebook was free to build a page on, and went to town, happily declaring they could do this on the cheap.

And that caused serious issues, for anyone trying to build serious social strategies and campaigns.

I hate QR codes, because they are going to turn people against the physicalization of internet experiences, before Near Field Communication adoption reaches a point where it will let us change how people have mobile interactive experiences.