Social media is not going away (duh), and to succeed, businesses need to embrace it (again, duh). But it doesn’t have infect your life (much).
“Facebook is the Internet for a lot of people,” said Greg Swan, director of digital, social and innovation at Fallon, a national advertising agency with offices in Minneapolis and New York. Swan was the featured speaker at the monthly Social Media Breakfast-Minneapolis/St. Paul (SMBMSP) yesterday.
Swan’s declaration was part of a discussion with Mykl Roventine, director of SMBMSP, and, not spoken with excitement. Swan is not a fan of Mark Zuckerberg, for all the reasons people who have paid attention do not care for Mark Zuckerberg. But if you’re going to compete in a digital world, Facebook is the platform one must engage.
Sigh.
I sighed a lot during the discussion, despite it being interesting, lively and, for a guy like me (jumping back into the media world after a five-year tangent) required listening. I sighed because, sitting on the seat to my right in its case was my 1960 Hasselblad 500c (a medium-format film camera) for some work I had after the meeting. I went back to film photography in recent years, in large part because I felt my creativity waning. With digital photography and its easy quantity and safety nets (such as exposure bracketing), one can lose the habit—and the joy—of contemplative composition. In the seats beyond my mid-20th-century tech were two older gentlemen, who paid rapt attention and, like me, scribbled in notebooks. Sitting in a couple seats to my left was a guy, probably in his mid-30s, device in hand, and he (or his thumb, rather) scrolled, scrolled, scrolled, at times looking up briefly to the stage like a seal taking in air, then back down he scrolled, scrolled, scrolled for the entire talk.
I sighed because while social media is the reality in which all marketers, publishers and anyone with a business must actively learn (and relearn), hearing things like:
- the average consumer scrolls through 300 feet—the height of the Statue of Liberty—of content on their mobile device per day;
- the average time a marketer, or any content generator, has to grab the attention of the average content scroller: 0.25 seconds;
- is Amazon recording everything through the smart devices you have in your home? Yes. (Swan said he has smart devices in each room of the house, but not the bedroom or bathroom. “Privacy is privacy.”);
and:
- “Our competition is, literally, Donald Trump;”
brought me down, man.
Especially that last item. But, unfortunately, Swan is right. The President’s active thumbs influence social media feeds—even if one is not directly “following” our, um, leader. Marketers are competing against that constant lurching logarithm driven by the madness of the day.
I sighed because I have taken some deliberate steps in the last two years to limit my screen time. My phone does not follow me into the bedroom at night, for example. I used to feel I needed it there, because I had executive responsibilities—the last line of defense in a company that had overnight business with important clients. I would get the occasional emergency call. But when that job ended, I began leaving the phone downstairs after hearing and reading reports that sleep improves—even if you are not using the device, you know it’s there, and the impulse to check email, social media, etc. remains.
Yes, my sleep did improve.
When I walk the lake near my house, my phone stays in my pocket, unless I take a photo. The result is I occasionally forget it at home on those walks. Which is liberating, in all honesty. While I never activated notifications, now my social media apps are inactive unless I’m near WiFi. I’m back to listening (and eavesdropping), keeping my head up. I write more with pen and paper. My thoughts wander again.
And, while I’ve always been a reader, I read more—more books. I haven’t heard my kid, who is six-and-half, say, “Dad, put your phone down,” in a long, long time. (She does not have a screen of her own.) I don’t feel that hazy desire for affirmation that comes with maintaining an over-active social media account. The consequence? I’ve lost some followers. I’m okay with that.
I am not one of “those” people, the social media haters who think nothing good comes from it. (Although the Cambridge Analytica scandal and everything that followed, plus our inability to enact regulation, do much to bolster that argument.) I have reconnected with family through social media, and, when I ran a magazine when Facebook and Twitter were launched, instead of scoffing at the new tech, we embraced it, and that magazine still prints (physically and digitally) today, where many others went out of business.
To effectively market one’s product or service, one needs to give social media one uncomfortably permanent hug. I get it. I will be grudgingly opening a TikTok account, thanks to Mr. Swan. But before you, the “average” scroller out there starts on their daily 300-foot journey, consider this: Sit on a bench somewhere and…just sit. Look around. Resist the device and settle into your own mind. Let your thoughts wander. Do that thing people used to call “daydreaming.” Starting that habit will likely give you an advantage over your competition.
