Social Media Got Boring

  By Tac Anderson | July 24, 2012 - 3:01 am |

It’s been quiet here. It’s not that I haven’t quit blogging, quite the opposite) it’s just that I’m not blogging about social media that much. Like I noted back in April, I’ve moved most of my blogging to Tumblr and am posting shorter posts, more frequently.

So why the change? Social media got boring.

The Evolution of a Social Media Professional

2007: Holy crap, this is so cool.
2008: This is really cool. You should check it out.
2009: Why won’t anyone listen to me. This is going to change everything.
2010: Yes! It’s working. I was right.
2011: See how well this works. I told you so.
2012: Oh whatever, I said all this stuff 5 years ago.

I love change. I love studying human behavior. I love solving puzzles. To me, all the big social media puzzles have been solved. There’s nothing new anymore, it’s all just variations of the same thing and from here on out it’s pretty obvious how things will play out, it’s just a matter of time. And I hate waiting. I feel like Sherlock Holmes when he’s bored waiting between cases (don’t worry, I haven’t resorted to shooting up cocaine like he did).

Sherlock Holmes
I don’t mean to sound condescending or arrogant, it’s just that social media has entered a phase where people like me, who fly at 30,000 feet, don’t add as much value as we used to. It’s now time for people who are better at scale and optimization to take over. Those of us that are better at the messy creation part (and find details boring) need to start thinking about what’s next for us.

Just to be clear, I still very much believe in social media. Social is now part of everything we do. But I believe we’re now entering the Post Social Age where we need to start building on top of the social world.

So where is Tac these days?

Tac.is is kind of my catch all blog. You;ll still see some social media stuff, some business stuff, some personal stuff and some random stuff. It’s where I’m most active and it’s probably where I’m going to move most of the more personal posts I want to keep.

Postsocial.us is the blog where I post things beyond social media. Things like cyborgs, psychology, the future, sensors, facial recognition technology, and in general things I find more interesting than social media. This is the blog I’ll move most of my predictions and other non social media stuff to.

Blog Posts From The Future is where I’m stretching my brain. I don’t have the attention span or the time right now to write a novel, so I’ve started to write fiction blog posts. It’s a lot of fun but posts here are far less frequent. My first post was on the Klout Phone and my latest one was on the Cyborg Olympics.

What If I Don’t Want To Follow 3 Blogs?

Of course if you follow me on Twitter, I’ll post links to all my various blogs but you’ll still likely miss stuff so that’s why I started a newsletter. I’ll be sending out ‘fortnightly’ updates where I’ll share a few thoughts and link to a few of my favorite posts. You can sign up here if you’re interested.

I’m not going to say that this is my last post here but they will probably be few and far between.

Cheers.

About Tac Anderson

Social media anthropologist. Communications strategist. Business model junkie. Chief blogger here at New Comm Biz.
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  • http://timbursch.com/ timbursch

    It’s fun to see the shifts in business, culture, and our own lives. I look forward to connecting along this adventure!

  • Ed Terpening

    I hear you, Tac. I’ve spoken to other leaders in this space, and they (like me) are struggling with the same questions.

    Look forward to following your next phase.

  • http://tac.is/here tacanderson

    Thanks Tim. It’s been fun so far so I have no reason to believe that will change. :)  

  • http://tac.is/here tacanderson

    Thanks Ed, we’re far from being the only ones. I think it’s an early adopter problem. Onward and upward. 

  • http://www.jeremymeyers.com/ Jeremy Meyers

    Glad you’ve graduated.  We’ve been waiting for you.

  • http://tac.is/here tacanderson

    Thank you sir. 

  • http://blog.louisgray.com/ Louis Gray

    Correct!

  • Passing the Yawn

    so funny… back to the newsletter… and we go full-circle. Agree with much of your sentiment.

  • http://www.ornitorrincoenlinea.com Angel B

    The most interesting part of your post is the timeline. I’ve always said Social Media in Latin America, Mexico specifically, were about 2 years behind. And from what you say, it seems we are painfully still in 2009 moving into 2010. There is still so much to do here the element of excitement remains although it is contrasted by a LOT of frustration about missed oportunities.

    On the other hand, your great posts will be sorely missed, They are one of my best sources of inspiration and thought. 

    I’ll keep in touch, however. 

    ¡Suerte!

  • http://twitter.com/mlitman michael litman

    Tac, 

    I entirely agree with this. It’s as if you extracted it out of my head! 

    Am in a similar place with social. A couple of years back it felt much more ground breaking, exciting, innovative. I don’t know, it just now feels like something entirely different, i’m wondering what is it that motivates me about it anymore. 

    I’ve just signed up to an evening course in anthropology because I’m still fascinated by people and their behaviours. That’s why I got in to social in the first place. Have just finished a course in philosophy which I really enjoyed. I’m trying to take myself more out of the social bubble (people, events, hollow connections) and understand more about what I’m really actually interested in.

    Thanks for this. 

    Mike 

  • http://twitter.com/JeromePineau Jerome Pineau

    Are you talking about social media in very large orgs or SMBs? What about social ROI? You believe this is solved as well? You equate it with Marketing ROI if I understand correctly – your thoughts on both being equal? Thanks. Compelling post!

  • http://tac.is/here tacanderson

    There is only one kind of ROI: a business spends money to make money. That’s it. If a company knows how marketing contributes to ROI then they already have the equation for the ROI of social media (as it pertains to marketing). When I worked at HP in their LaserJet division, Marketing ROI was measured by how many printers were sold because of what you did. Therefore all of my social media efforts were focused on selling printers. Know there are several KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) that are “indicators” of ROI. These are things like media coverage and advertising. The problem is that most marketers are too lazy to connect KPIs to ROI. They know they help but they don’t know exactly how they help. Many big and small companies work this way, and they do very well, but if you can’t map KPIs like press coverage and advertising to ROI, then you’re not going to be able to map KPIs like fans and likes to ROI. This isn’t social media’s fault, it’s lazy marketeers fault. :)  

  • http://tac.is/here tacanderson

    I obviously thing that Anthropology is a great filed of research Mike. Best of luck and let me know how it goes. 

  • http://tac.is/here tacanderson

    Thanks Angel. Working in EMEA for the last year, I can tell you there’s a lot of European countries that are just as far behind or worse. The good news is most of the problems have already been solved, the bad news is that you’re largely just going to have to wait for the market to get there. It will, it’s just a matter of time. 

  • http://twitter.com/JeromePineau Jerome Pineau

    yeah, i mean that’s along the lines of Olivier Blanchard’s thoughts (actually I believe his FRY economics to be on the money) pertaining to social ROI – on the other hand, you also have things like brand perception, trust, WOM generation, all these things that ultimately end up in increased bottom lines but not necessarily right away or directly – so connecting the dots from A to Z is where the challenge is. And in the customer care/support realm of social (so not pure marketing per se) it tends to get hairier as well at least in my experience. Because then you have things like retention, and retaining lifetime value of a customer (as opposed to him bailing out to a competitor) that are tough to properly measure. I think the last Altimeter ROI paper is really compelling on that front as well (
    http://www.slideshare.net/Altimeter/the-social-media-roi-cookbook?ref=http://blog.exacttarget.com/blog/socially-creative-and-delivered/how-top-brands-are-measuring-the-impact-of-social-media-roi) – what did you think about it yourself?

  • http://tac.is/here tacanderson

    That’s kind of my point; no it’s not easy but your company either knows how they connect agreed upon KPI’s or they don’t. If you don’t, that’s not a social media problem, that’s a larger problem. If you don’t know how to connect things like PR and advertising or even customer support to ROI, but believe that it’s “good for business,” then that’s fine. If you can’t connect your other KPIs to ROI you won’t be able to connect social, but if you do want to connect social, then you need to solve those other problems first. It’s not any harder to connect than the others, nor is any easier. 

  • http://twitter.com/JeromePineau Jerome Pineau

    True that – there’s also a benchmark issue it seems – what I’ve heard from Marketing heads sometimes is that they can easily benchmark an email lead generation campaign, for example, but when it comes to say Facebook, they dont know/understand what to expect. In other words, if you do an email campaign and you get X% conversions back, ok you can compare that to industry standards. But if you build a FB page, get 5,000,000 fans, for example, is that good, bad, average, in the ballpark? How would you compare that (FB case) to traditional marketing ROI metrics to make a case for doing it.

  • http://tac.is/here tacanderson

    This is a stupid complaint IMO. Of course you don’t know how to benchmark a social campaign because you haven’t done enough yet. When email was invented they didn’t know how to benchmark those either. Marketeers need to get off their lazy asses and just go do it, then you’ll know what works and what the benchmarks are.

  • Rowland John

    Great posting, it was a brilliant read.

  • seo

    Great post.you have shared with us.Keep it up.

  • Nixon Parker

    It is not boring according to my point of view. I am engaging in the social media marketing but it is great for me.