Social Media Marketing: What’s All The Hubbub?

OK. So you have your choice of social websites that you want to use to keep up with everything you can possibly think of. You can use Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Classmates.com, Plaxo, imeem and Flickr to name just a few.

But the big question for me is: Why?

I have signed up for accounts on a few of these sites to check them out and see what all the hype is about. I just don’t get it. Maybe it’s because I work on computers all day long and I just feel that I don’t have the time to sit down at a computer for hours on end to read all the junk that people post on their social accounts. You know the ones I mean, “I’m tired, I’m going to bed” or “It’s another Monday”. Well, thanks for telling me.

I guess I feel that if it isn’t something you would ever call someone to tell them, why would you write it here?

Don’t get me wrong, I think social sites are a great idea, but they just aren’t used in a way that makes any sense to me. It’s a great way to catch up with old friends, or even find new ones. Unfortunately, we all have friends or relatives that feel the need to sign up for every game, quiz or cause – and then pass them on to us. I was even sent a status update on Facebook once or twice saying that someone (no names) started a pillow fight with me. Huh? I won’t get into how idiotic that is, let alone the fact that I haven’t talked to this person in probably 18 years. I mean, really, that is the first thing that came to your mind today when you got on Facebook?

To me, all these sites are just like e-mail used to be. Everybody jumps on board because it’s the “New Thing” and then ruins the whole purpose of it. Remember when you used to get spam from just your friends and family? They would pass on every joke they ever read. That was the only e-mail I would get from family. There was never anything about their family or new things going on in their lives. Since I fix computers for a living, I was the one that had to help them fix their computers when they downloaded viruses. I finally had to tell them all to stop sending me anything since it was all junk. I now get the same thing in my status updates. Not much is useful, just 99 percent junk.

I really do like the idea of being able to catch up with friends I haven’t seen since high school. Honestly, it’s probably a better way to do it than going to a class reunion. I guess that’s why this is called “social” media. The people that are sending updates every five minutes are the same ones that are very social in life as well. Those of us that are annoyed by them are probably annoyed by them offline as well. I guess that’s why I like the sites like darwinawards.com so much; it’s more of an anti-social website. And that’s my two cents.

*Editor’s Note: If you like the information in this blog, check out our blog that is dedicated to social media at StraightUpSocial.com.