Just Chill Out, Man

There is an idea in digital strategy that those who are prepared to ‘like’ or ‘follow’ brands on social media are just as enthusiastic to talk to them; to have a two-way conversation – as it is commonly described – wherein consumers are ready and willing to listen and respond to what brands are saying.

Comforting as this idea is for businesses that build themselves around social media marketing, it’s a huge stretch.

If we strip online behaviour back to its psychological roots, it becomes apparent that there is no fair trade-off. People are comfortable sharing information about themselves, but couldn’t care less about what faceless strangers are trying to tell them.

In essence, people want to be heard without doing any listening.

The authenticity craze in social media marketing is well-founded, but seems to be diverging from this simple insight. Being authentic is being transparent; it’s being honest with your audience about who you are, why you’re around, and what you plan to do when things go to shit.

But this doesn’t mean your audience wants to talk to you. Unless they’re complaining, they probably won’t. It doesn’t even mean that they’ll trust you, because again, they probably won’t.

All it means is that your audience will be able judge authentic communications from non-authentic, swindling corporate bullshit. And, probably to the surprise of those who sincerely use the word ‘sheeple’, most of us are already pretty good at this.

"Wake up, sheeple"

The idea of a ‘relationship’ between consumer and brand based on metrics of ‘engagement’ is out-dated because it doesn’t take into account how people interact with one another online. Because here’s something: we hate brands who talk to us, but we readily seek out bloggers, vloggers, instababes, sketchy advice from those who don’t have the credentials to back what they’re saying, and really anyone who is attractive and shares stolen content.

The reason we care about these people but not about brands is because we feel like we know these people. They talk to us like we’re people, about real people stuff, and suddenly we’re hanging on their every word.

It’s one of the simplest psychological phenomena. The more we feel like we know a person, the more we like them, and the more we like them, the more we trust what they’re saying. This trust makes us believe we know them even more, and so on and so forth… The cycle is self-repeating.

Brands, by contrast, do not feel known to us, and their attempts at making themselves known often come off as manufactured and invasive. This is because their strategies often involve telling us what we want, rather than listening to what its audience is saying and generating content based on that.

“Oh,” you say, “but my brand is listening to consumers. When people say they want something cheaper and faster, we deliver on that and let them know through social media!”

"Work your medium, fam"

That attitude is all well and good for traditional channels, but this is social media, a channel that 99% of people use primarily for entertainment. We use it to talk about ourselves, to feel heard, and to feel known.

The most successful Facebook pages, for example, are usually successful because they don’t give a single fuck. They realise that it’s all about entertainment – that it’s all a bit of a joke – and that anyone who takes it entirely at face value is missing the point.

If your primary goal as a brand with a digital presence isn’t getting people to stop scrolling for even half a second to watch some mildly entertaining and/or high-octane, heart-wrenching material then you’re probably doomed to be lost within the tens of thousands of unseen, unheard, and unrecognised pages floating through the void to eventually be crushed into ones and zeroes.

A 240p resolution photo of a contorted face with the caption “when the beat drops and u feelin it” can get a hundred thousand likes and shares, and yet your perfectly reasonable hyperlink to an article detailing the best value for money across your countless stores gets three likes and a complaint that nothing’s ever cheap enough.

Is this not enough of a wake-up call?

Here is a list of the reasons the former types of posts get traction:

• They’re relatable
• They make us feel known
• They don’t take themselves too seriously
• They are said from one real person to another
• They take advantage of our fractured attention by providing, bite-sized, easily-digestible entertainment that is forgotten as quickly as it is seen

As much as it pains some of us to say: this is, in essence, what social media has become. Those who play within these parameters are likely to build up a presence and a following, while gaining trust, attention, and a place in your audiences’ memory in return.

Becoming a memory is the ultimate outcome for any social media-grandstanding, content-generating whathaveyou that just wants to be heard. If you can achieve that as a brand, then the natural processes of salience and consideration are likely to follow.

Social media: the real-life incarnation of Shaggy from Scooby Doo.

"Just chill out, man"

a.ce