12 Most Pressing Reasons Social Media Must Die

• Buffer
• Tweet
• Email

• Buffer
• Tweet
• Email

Social Media can certainly be credited for some amazing social good and business achievements during past years including the sponsoring of regime change in some countries, mass awareness of public issues and fundraising activities for charities. However, the public’s fixation on “Social Media” has also created a national distraction that has limited the individual, businesses and our society in general.

At the very least, it’s spawned a series of personal pet peeves that makes me want give it a lethal injection. So I submit for your consideration, my 12 most pressing reasons Social Media must die.

1. The ridiculous job titles

Social Media has single handily spawned a new breed of experts, ninjas, gurus and grand imperial wizards which mean nothing but authorized chatter-boxes. This alone should be enough reason to kill it but we’ll continue.

2. Lost sight of profit

Social Media has made millions for start-ups and entrepreneurs but muddied the waters on generating profit for the rest our businesses. Too much of Social Media’s focus has been on engagement for the sake of engagement with no one willing to take responsibility for the business’s profit. This has to stop.

3. Blurred the definition of ROI

ROI = Return on Investment, which before Social Media became the be-all-and-end-all of the business psyche, meant the net dollars left over when a tactic’s expenses were subtracted from the revenue that it generated. Yet most marketers are focused on redefining ROI to mean a number of tweets, a number of followers or other such “metrics” in an attempt to justify their inability to link their social engagement with measurable revenue.

4. Oh, the buzzwords

Authentic. Holistic. Transparency. Trust. While it’s generally the improper use of these words that annoys me, the overuse of them has certainly annoyed enough people to drop out of social chatter altogether.

5. Redefined personal relationships

The very nature of friendships seems to have been modified by decreasing the value of “depth” in human connections. People boast their undying love for others that they’ve never met face to face across the digital airwaves on an increasingly frequent basis. What does that say about those we do engage in person?!

6. Klout

The simple fact that Social Media has allowed businesses such as Klout (and others) to establish false perceptions of people’s influence and impact on our community has added “Social Media” to the Digital Most Wanted list. When we start making judgment calls about a person’s ability based on gamified digital engagements, we’re heading down the wrong path.

7. Too many rainbows and cats

Men crying over double rainbows or toilet-flushing cats may be fine for a momentary diversions but frankly, too much of the user generated content distributed through Social Media is such drivel and too little of it is about changing the world for the better.

8. Increasing national obesity levels

Social Media cannot be blamed for the fact that the American population is one of the heaviest in the world, but it has certainly played an active role is propelling the gross-weight of the US to new heights, er, pounds.

9. Diminished the value of a handshake

A retweet is commonly referred to as having the equivalent value of a handshake today; a truly sad state of affairs. The value of a strong handshake while looking your contact in the eye conveys more about you and your character than a lazy retweet.

10. Oversharing

Propelled by social networks, oversharing has become so accepted in our society that it’s almost expected. We’re disappointed when people don’t share the frequency of their cat’s bowel movements or the number of times they visit a Starbucks. Mundane personal habits have become fodder for national news.

11. Destroying the concept of privacy

Aside of the oversharing point above, Social Media has lowered our expectations of privacy. In fact, most willingly accept lower privacy settings in favor of increased social sharing. How many of you blindly check “terms of use” without reading them? Or agreed to “grant access” to Facebook to download apps, play games or converge social networks?

12. Farmville

Nielsen recently reported that Facebook & Farmville represent 1/3 of the average Web surfer’s online time! If only 10% of those people spent that free time growing real vegetables and raising real livestock we’d effectively eliminate world hunger.

In all seriousness, the real point here is that while it was a necessary step in the evolution of communication, the public’s fixation on “Social Media” as an independent entity has stifled our creativity and innovation towards “what’s next”. We’re not seeing the forest for the trees folks. When we finally drop the title and embrace Social Media for what it is: digital word of mouth, we’ll be free to evolve to whatever is next in human and business communications.

Can I get an AMEN?

Sam Fiorella

http://www.senseiwisdom.com/

Sam Fiorella is a globetrotting interactive marketing strategist who has earned his stripes over the past 20 years in senior management roles with corporate sales &marketing teams as well as consulting for more than 30 marketing agencies. Sam’s experience with over 1600 Interactive projects during the past 15 years spans the government, finance & insurance, manufacturing, national retail and travel/tourism sectors. Currently, Sam is the Chief Strategy Sensei at Sensei Marketing, where he is charged with strategic campaign guidance and marketing technology development that power the Sensei Customer Lifecycle Methodology. Sam is a respected blogger and popular keynote speaker on marketing, branding and social media communications having presented at more than 200 conferences in the past 2 years. Follow Sam on Twitter or Connect with him on LinkedIn.