There’s more to Digital Marketing than just Social Media

I hate that all digital marketing jobs now revolve around social media. While I don’t disagree that it has great potential for some businesses, it becomes insulting when after 4 years of experience, the jobs available are “update our social media profiles”. Why don’t you just hire a 15 year old to do that?

I also hate that people can be so naive about social media and especially the impact it’s going to have on workplaces in the next 5 years. All the time I read articles written by alledged journalists who shockingly reveal “Gen Y thinks email is lame”. Does anyone ever ask themselves why that is? Well let’s see… when you’re 15 and at school, you can’t be on a computer all day with your inbox open, and not all phones support email (and not all teachers support phones!). However, all phones support text messaging, which is generally the latter part of Gen Y’s chosen method of communication. Secondly – THEY HAVE NEVER BEEN TO WORK. Once you start to work in an office with people who range in age from 20-65, you get used to email REALLY quickly, and it DOES become your preferred method of communication. Not all Gen Y kids are going to work at a company that let’s them use Facebook to communicate to their work colleagues (HA! As if), nor will they even let them use MSN or Skype. I can’t imagine Deloitte or PriceWaterhouse saying “Oh we have gotten rid of email here but will get you to communicate with clients via Facebook and Twitter.”

I am sure I have said it before but I actually feel like this obsession with social media has put the world in this weird hurricane of insanity. I go to conferences where they scarily dim the lights and play videos about the power of social media, with heart thumping music and blinding sequences that make me feel like I’m in a bunker in <em>Lost</em> watching those mind control tapes made by the Dharma Initiative.

I can’t wait for the uprising, a ‘war against the machines’. I feel sad that people have such a narrow mind that they truly believe social media is the saviour for all communication in the world, and that without Facebook and Twitter noone would ever know about global events in a matter of hours and blah blah. And newscasters after disasters saying “People have turned to Twitter to send messages to loved ones”… umm, in the case of the Queensland floods, do you really think those people being washed away are checking their Twitter account? I can’t wait for all the psychological studies to start coming out that report on why people feel the need to splutter all the crap they do onto social networking sites.

I’m sorry I’m ranting.. I find I just get so upset that with social media, more than anything else, if a tiny percentage of people do something on it, then all 500 million (active AND non-active) Facebook users are doing it too.

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