I get up in the morning, check my email first and then explore what happened overnight on Google+, Facebook and Twitter. My streams are littered with reactions to some software updates or a new app release, musings about social platforms and why they’re dead or half-alive, food posts, complaints about flight delays, snarky remarks about politicians or pundits.

It’s my fault. I created this virtual world.

These are friends, colleagues, acquaintances, thought leaders. I chose to follow them. I created this stream. Sometimes it seems silly.

We have so many problems in this world. Our institutions don’t work anymore. We have a crumbling infrastructure. Debt everywhere. People kicking cans down the road. I’m worried about our future. I’m even more worried about our kid’s future.

Social Media was supposed to change the world

We finally had a voice. We finally could speak out. But we tend to talk mostly about entertaining issues: TV shows, sports, weather.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not blaming anyone. I’m just blaming myself. We’ve been given this fantastic technology and we tend waste it on trivial matters.

Since I called myself out…

Over time, I will try to make a meaningful effort to add more compelling content into the stream. And stop bothering people with the triviality of my existence.

The Arab Spring, the London riots, the storm in Los Angeles: Examples were Social Media was used beyond marketing.

Take this video:

A racist woman on the tram.  The viral video – named My Tram Experience – shows a white woman racially abusing Black and Polish people on a train from Croydon to Wimbledon.  The video, which is extremely uncomfortable to watch, sparked millions of tweets on the subject.  The hashtag #mytramexperience was the top trend one day and soon the video had been watched million of times.  Later, following outrage from the general public and many celebrities, the woman, later named Emma West, was arrested.

That is the power of Social Media. And we should remember it when we tweet or post the next time.

Or Twitter. Or any other social platform

Everybody has favorite brands. We have preferences when it comes to cars, restaurants, TV shows, movies, grocery stores, bands, authors, bloggers – you name it. You are one of these brands that people like and continue to purchase.

Wonderful.

So, one day you decide to jump on the Social Media bandwagon and develop a presence on some social platforms. Let’s say your first choice is Facebook. And you start to market your Facebook page: “Please find us” or “Like us”. And they do.

Wonderful.

Not really. Wonderful for some customers and brands. The small minority.

The majority of customers hate their favorite brand on Facebook.

Why?

Because you are only focused on the platform and not on the offer.

The majority of people follow brands because they want offers, are current customers or explore entertaining content that they can’t get anywhere else. People connect with brands because they want something and they expect brands to give them something.

Focus on less on the what. And more on the why.

The social space is littered with brands that never answered the question why a person should connect with them. Marketing on a social platform doesn’t work without the why. Brands need to define their own WHY before choosing a specific platform. Once you determined your why, you can create your strategy: Content to engage people, contests, polls, humor, discounts, coupons – your why has to be aligned with your brand promise and needs to be sustainable for the long-term.

Define your value proposition and communicate it.

Don’t just ask people to like you or follow you on Twitter. Tell them what they get in return, why they spend their limited time with your content, what’s in for them?

Being social is your primary goal. Being a marketer is secondary.

Nothing wrong with marketing on social platforms. Don’t feel guilty about it. But you have to be social. Create compelling content that keeps people coming back. The customers are really the king on social platforms. You’re the servant.

Whenever I go to Facebook, I tend to see the same people on top of my newsfeed (I love you all.) and a lot of (almost) strangers. I met some of them a few years back, made the connection, never to see them again. I know what they are doing each day, what hotel they are staying, what song they are listening to.

But I often don’t see my own wife. Or my best friend.

There’s mounting evidence that Facebook is making assumptions about me – without asking.

Those (false assumptions) are shaping who else I see, meet and talk with and I find that deeply problematic.

Last weekend, while watching football, I went through all my Facebook friends and clicked on the forgotten ones. The ones that I normally don’t see. The ones that I miss. My friends. I was hoping that clicking on their profile would change the algorithm and let Facebook know that I care about these people. Nothing changed. I still see the usual suspects. And the strangers.

Personalization can be very convenient and useful. But it can also be wrong and damaging. Personalization may find you lots of what you like, but look at the ads that you see. They are based on similar assumptions. On my page, it’s the request to like Michelle Obama, some crappy brain enhancing formula and the request to like Kia. I don’t care about Michelle Obama that much, my brain functions very well, thank you very much, and don’t get me started on Kia.

Assumptions behind personalization are wrong all too often.

Those assumptions will push you in a direction that you may not want to head into. I don’t mind reading about strangers but the reason for investing time in Facebook was to stay close to family and friends, wasn’t it? Facebook should offer the option of opting in and give me more freedom. They can ask each of us to confirm assumptions they are making.

Of course they won’t. It’s inconvenient to them in their haste to assume they know what is convenient to us and what is not.

It will get worse.

Rumor says, Facebook will try to get public next year. This will increase the pressure on the platform to improve monetization. The algorithm will be changed to improve opportunities for brands to connect with us. We’ll see more brands/advertising/marketing and less friends. Makes sense for Facebook. Not so much for us.

Many agencies have added social to their list of offerings. Some have added new people with specific skills to support/activate and engage social platforms. Other agencies just added social to the responsibilities of the media department.

That’s a big problem. Because social and digital are not the same.

A digital skillset involves software programming, interface design, content management, data management, analytics, media planning/buying, etc. That doesn’t mean you know anything about social.

When you are adept in the ways of Social Media, it’s also likely that you’re familiar with the technologies that support these communications. You understand the rules of engagement on Facebook; you know how to create a refined social advertising campaign; you can hop on CoTweet and know exactly what you’re doing; you’re focusing on the right metrics and deliver. That doesn’t mean you know anything about digital.

In good agencies, digital marketing services are organically integrated with Social Media. It doesn’t make it any less distinct a discipline.

The biggest difference: the mindset.

Digital and interactive are primarily either one-to-one or one-to-many communication forms.

Social is many-to-many communications. And that makes all the difference.

In one-to-one communication, the brand (in this case) knows what it wants to communicate, and perhaps has some idea about who it is talking to.

One-to-many communication is the most prevalent form of broadcast with the hope that the message is something that the target audience will appreciate and take action on.

Social is many-to-many, and here the crux is uncertainty. Brands may assume that they know what they are getting into, who they are talking to but they can’t predict the reaction.

Digital does not require any internal attitude change or rallying of other divisions – it is merely extending the brands’ communication into yet another broadcast media.

Social requires a different mindset and the understanding that brands are just incidental to the conversation online.

Apples and oranges.