The Static Web is Dead

Let me add my twist to the WIRED issue of earlier this fall with a couple of realizations for social media. Pelting media outlets with press release after press release was considered annoying and counterproductive. In the early days of digital media, that was considered spamming.

Those who do not regularly use social media tools -- real-time like Twitter or social graph like Facebook -- fear those standbys of static PR. Say it once. Say it well. Say it in a clear corporate voice.

That thinking is so 2000.

The social media is like the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam:

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on

If you have something important to message and you do it only once a day, you are counting on having caught your target audience in front of the screen when you sent it. Take a look at your tools. How fast does your wall move? How may visible Tweets are on your deck?

The moving fingers of your keyboard must repeat, and not be fearful of that. What gets you classed as spamming is saying the same thing, the same way, from the same source every time. The worst thing -- the most corporate thing -- is to have three or four different accounts/tools sending out the exact same message.

It looks programmed. It shows no imagination. It is not personal.

You are the soulless automaton in the 1984 Apple commercials. The difference is there are no drones standing there to listen. Because the web is now personalized, it is mobile and it is not, as WIRED was trying to tell us, locked inside a browser world.

I could stack you up with a bunch of links and bore you with more of my own experience (which, unfortunately I will when time permits -- two case studies to support this from recent campaigns, complete with control counter-points).

Think about yourself. If you have even a casual sized friend base for your social graph, doesn't it turn over four or five times a day? If you're following more than 50 really active news sources, how many times is something you were looking for two, three, ten screens back?

Be the moving finger.