I’m a fan (or maybe it’s what I hate it when people make me play) of Buzzword Bingo. That’s where you’re sitting in a meeting, conference, classroom, presentation, or maybe just on Twitter and you’re being flooded by Buzzwords. Buzzwords are generally meant to try to show that you’ve “got it” and that you’re on top of the newest trend. They are made in a poor attempt to try to make an old concept new, and thus inject marketing dollars into it, or get something sold.
The one that grinds my gears the most is “Viral”. “Omg, we’re about to launch a viral video”, someone might say. The moment someone says that, you should quickly cover your ears, or at least stop paying attention to that person. On the internet viral actually means this: Something that has unexpectedly spread due to people sharing it with others in a rapid way, generally going past a certain tipping point and becoming an epidemic, where nearly everyone says, “yea, I’ve seen that”.
Let’s look over this again:
Unexpected- Unless someone is damn good, and there are less than .0001% of you out there that are that good, you can’t “make” your video go viral. You can try to seed it in the right places, but unless its something people really love and need to share its not going to spread. The curve should go up for views, not spike and then fall off the face of the earth. Every damn video your company puts out will not be viral. Soulja Boy’s main “Crank That” videos have gone viral. The rest of his stuff just gets a lot of views. If you can actually consistently make viral videos, then you’ve probably been getting 7 figure paychecks for it in the past year, and no one knows what you actually do because you don’t want to spoil the secret. It is nearly impossible to conceptualize in your head what the internet will take and run with. When you watched what we know now as the “Rick Roll” in the 80’s, when it was just a music video did you think, “OMG THIS IS VIRAL?”. No you didn’t. You can’t figure it out. Stop trying.
Rapid- Just getting a lot of views slowly over time doesn’t do it. Once people catch onto it, it needs to spread like wildfire. This often involves 4Chan picking it up, it hitting the front page of Digg, and it getting reposted to a few hundred if not a few thousand forum posts. Janet Jackson’s boob falling out was viral. Within 24 hours, the entire world knew exactly what she had under that costume.
Tipping Point- If a few thousand people see it, that’s great, but it doesn’t make it viral. The internet is huge these days. If you aren’t hitting hundreds of thousands of views in the “rapid” stage, then you likely again are missing viral.
Everyone’s seen it- I don’t think anyone who was on the Internet in the late 90’s didn’t see the hamster dance, then you probably weren’t actually on the internet.
Viral videos often turn into memes of some sort if they are really on-key and accepted by the internet.
So what are your videos if not viral?
Popular- Just because people watch the Presidental Debates didn’t make them viral. People sent them around, sure. They weren’t viral.
Funny- Don’t confuse every funny video with viral. It’s just not it. The joke that you thought of and told your mom in 4th grade might have been funny, but it wasn’t viral.
Promotional- There’s a good chance that this video is promoting you, your company, or your product. Sometimes this will get spread around
Well Promoted- So you just got 30,000 views of your video after blasting it out to twitter and having dozens of people make best attempts to distribute it. Then it falls off the face of the earth. Guess what? Not viral. You just promoted the hell out of it. What’s why it got views. If it was so good on its own merit, it wouldn’t have needed that.
In short, the internet takes care of viral for us. It acts as a hive mind and distributes it for you. Sure, there’s tricks you can do, promotions you can make, but what you’ve done at that point is promote something well, not create something that went viral.
Having a “viral video” isn’t the only mark of success. Your video can serve its purpose without being viral. Not being viral doesn’t mean you’ve failed (unless that was your goal), or made a bad video. There’s probably a few hundred actual viral videos every year at best. Yours just doesn’t happen to be one of them.Viral isn’t always good in fact. The “Motrin Moms” ad recently went viral. I don’t think it had the same effect that they had intended.
Instead, try making a video with a purpose and content, that isn’t intended to be viral. Maybe it will become viral on its own.
Today on Twitter news spread like wildfire about Matt Bacak (don’t follow him) and his terrible PR release that he put out on PRWeb. Not only does this highlight my prior post that Twitter has become a numbers game and popularity contest, but it shows that this guy is a self promoting monster. Sure, we all self promote some, who doesn’t? But this guy takes it to a new level of ego and arrogance.
One of Matt's websites! How friendly!
People on Twitter swarmed on this guy. In his press release he claimed himself to be big on Twitter because HubSpot’s Twitter Grader put him in the Twitter Elite for Atlanta, GA. The language used made him seem so full of himself, egotistical and in short a douchebag. It was enough for hundreds to Digg his press release claiming him the “The Biggest Douchebag in Social Media“. It should be noted that Twitter Grader can’t tell that “Atlanta” and “Atlanta, GA” are the same place, and that he’s only highly ranked in “Atlanta, GA” where even a Cat is above him as was pointed out in a comment on Jamie Scheu’s blog, in a post about the ordeal.
You should take a glance at the Search/Summize feed for this guy, as its a riot from the past few hours.
I had a hint from the beginning that this likely wasn’t a one time occurance however, and when Googling his name my Firefox autocomplete put finished out his name with “scam” at the end. That seemed odd, so I selected it and searched for “Matt Bacak Scam“. All of a sudden I felt that I was watching an X-Files or Lost episode where what you thought was the main plot suddenly became a diversion and melted away.
It seems that our friend Matt Bacak isn’t just a newbie in PR and marketing that got it all wrong. No, this guy knows what he’s doing and is a grade A scum of the internet douchebag that makes the guys on 4chan look good.
There have been alleged scams that he’s ran (that seem like 1-step pyramid schemes), every press release has more spin than watching Fox News, oh and he has great sites like http://www.generatemillionsonline.com/ on which he claims he made over 3 million last year, on the front page. Most people don’t even like to talk about their salaries, but bragging about it like that is pretty bad. Other sites like http://www.powerfulpromoter.com/ are just as bad, claiming to make you gobs of money with your web business.
It’s almost too much to type. He puts stupidly shameless self promoting stuff on Digg. Not just blog articles that he wants to share, but ones like “Matt Bacak joins Twitter“.
Then he has the audacity to have a site like “Matt Bacak’s Pansy Report” in which is partially refutes some claims against him, and tries to use reverse psychology and other sales techniques to try to get you to sign up for his stuff. Oh, and he claims in it to warn you about the “Dark side of internet marketing”. There’s complaints on Rip-Off Report about this guy. He IS the dark side of internet marketing. Look at the final page on his Pansy Report. It’s a get-rich-quick scheme.
So let’s be clear, this wasn’t one guy’s small mistake in putting out this press release. The guy’s entire career is a dark mark on the internet, marketing, pr and social media as a whole. I don’t care how much money the guy has made, but he’s clearly one step from being a fraud, and doesn’t make what most of us would term as an honest living.
Sickeningly, since all of this has happened… he’s gotten almost 100 new followers. Of course Matt himself hasn’t responded to anyone via Twitter so god knows what he thinks about this. Incidentally he has his office phone number of 770-271-1536 on his website, so maybe I’ll call tomorrow morning and ask for comment.
UPDATE 12/5/2008: Yea, I tore into this guy a little hard. So did just about everyone. He screwed up. Putting something out on that PRWeb site cost him at least $500, so I’m sure it wasn’t something done without ‘any’ thought put into it. I mainly have a problem with this guy’s ego and tone. I have zero problem with success in social media. I’m friends/acquintences with many ‘big’ people in social media and think they are great. None of them are full of themselves, or have huge egos. I didn’t even know that Chris Brogan or Laura Fitton (@Pistachio) were “big” in social media until someone else told me. Zero ego, just confidence and skill. Matt’s done some of the right thing by partially owning up to making a mistake. He hasn’t done so with the hubris that I’d expect after a massive screwup like this, but he has done well and tried to reach out to the people who made comments about him and for that I respect him. I still think that in general what he does online with “Internet Marketing” isn’t exactly something that I find to be good or wholesome and I’m not sure what real value it offers, more than just pissing people off or offering get-rich-quick schemes. He’s obviously done well in his field, but just needs to tone down things a bit and learn a bit of humility. He charges for seminars, but in him doing this, he’s gotten more than a seminar of Social Media consulting of what not to do.
Twitter, the CB-Radio of the internet, has become a follower numbers game for many. Everyone has to play a bit, but some people are living and breathing the game.
The end goal for many is to have more “Followers”, that is people that hear what you say, on Twitter. Having a larger number of followers gives to a degree more credibility, gives greater ability to spread ideas or products, and often overall makes you feel pretty good. Then again, some people just want to spam you with their company’s failed social media attempts.
At first, some tried following a ton of people, some upwards of 50,000, in hopes that 10-20% of those would follow them back, and would give them a strong following to spread their message. This started looking bad, and having a poor “ratio” often would be indicative of a spammer. This lead toward the faux pas of following too many people and having such a ratio or you too would be considered a spammer. Oh yea, and Twitter started banning them. This has been further reinforced by things like Hubspot’s Twitter Grader, which rewards people with a higher grader if they follow significantly less people than follow them (among other things). Keep in mind that at the end of the day this causes a pyramid scheme like stack, if the act of following/being followed is a currency, where the ‘top’ people have put the least into it but have gained the most, and the people at the bottom have put the most in but gained the least.
Now, new tools have been developed which have only perpetuated this game. When Twitter was young curating 10,000 people that you’ve followed and seeing if they had followed you back was tedious. Now with something like Twitter Karma you can quickly look at everyone following you, and all of the people that you follow and check for reciprocation of the follow. However, another tool is helping alert people of this activity: Qwitter.
Qwitter lets you see who has unfollowed you. At first this might seem useless, or vain but its neat to notice and catch people who are trying to game the system. Everyone at first says, “Oh, no one unfollows me, all of my followers love me and what I say.” They soon find that isn’t true.
Here’s the new game I’ve noticed: Since having much worse than a 1:1 Follower:Friend ratio on Twitter is looked down on and often prevents people from following them back (making the problem even worse), the spammers and spam-like people follow a bunch of people, maybe 200, and then wait two days. They then use something like Twitter Karma and unfollow anyone that hasn’t followed them back. They then have a perfect ratio again! They rinse and repeat, following another large groups of people. If you’re using Qwitter you can catch them. Not that you can do anything about it, asides from maybe contribute to some Twitter Blacklist (well, that one is close now but whatever) but at least it makes you feel good that you didn’t follow them back.
There’s many downsides to this numbers game however. Some of us like a large stream of information. I honestly wish I was following 2-3x as many people as I’m following now, just so at 2am the conversation would still be flowing around me. Its not overwhelming as long as you’re using a good client that supports groups like TweetDeck. I hope that people follow me back, and I like having a healthy and engaged following, yet I don’t want to tip the social norms and be seen as a spammer. Twitter already banned my account once mistaking me for a spammer and I’d prefer to not have such allegations or mistakes made again.
Also, keep in mind that this turns it into a game- not a conversation. Conversations aren’t numbers. People aren’t numbers. Having a ‘killer ratio’ doesn’t matter. People who are only following back 100 people, but having 75,000 people following them aren’t engaged in the conversation (I’m looking at you Kevin Rose). They are there for their own celebrity. People who play the follow/unfollow/spam game on Twitter aren’t in the conversation with you either. Don’t follow them back, and don’t worry when they unfollow you. They don’t care what you have to say, only that you listen to them.
What do you think of the numbers game that Twitter has become for many? Are there any rules you play by? Are there any rules you break?
Throughout Obama’s campaign he remained cutting edge with social media. He used Twitter, Digg and even an iPhone application to help drive his campaign. McCain of course stayed with technology from the 1970s and the results spoke for themselves.
He has the biggest Twitter following of all, with over 120,000 followers. Records were broken on the front page of Digg. The question that now occurs to me is, what will he do with all of this power? What does it enable him to do that no President has ever done? Has any President ever had so many willing people that would follow him literally instantly? This is his citizen army to do good deeds that will make America great again. Will he ask us all to write letters to our congressmen on issues? Ask us to donate in times of needs to things like Katrina? Ask our opinion about things like the economy?
Roosevelt had his Fireside Chats, which brought him into the living room of Americans and reached out to help them through hard times. Kennedy used the television. Obama used the internet.
I can’t even fathom all the sorts of things that Obama can use his internet influence for to get Americans not just relying on stale press releases, or State of the Union addresses that other Presidents have. If something happens, he can instantly reach out without the press as the middleman. He doesn’t have to wait for newsreporters, the papers to be printed the next day. He can push out something to Twitter and put it in my pocket.
Never before has the President been able to pull out his cell phone, and literally reach out to you instantly. If disaster strikes, or if something wonderful happens he can call us all to action.
I see this as a uniting force potential that I sincerly hope that he continues to use. They have launched Change.gov which seems to be the beginning of this all, but I look forward to seeing the manefestations of it. Will Obama continue to reach out through Youtube? What type of transparancy will he offer? Will we know who he is meeting with daily and what he feels on things through a blog?
Yes We Can, is a statement of the future and I look forward to seeing this future that Obama enables. For these things alone even, I am glad we have Obama as I feel that McCain would have done none of these.
You followed me on Twitter. Maybe you followed me because you thought what I was saying was interesting. For many they follow people seemingly in order to get a reciprocal follow back. Yet, for some reason I didn’t follow back. A few days later I get an email in my box from Qwitter that you unfollowed me on Twitter, and that’s ok. Why did I not follow you back?
Let’s take a look at the reasons that I didn’t follow you back and think about them a bit:
You fell through the cracks- I hate to say it, but Twitter and my social media network aren’t my highest priorities in life at the moment. They are up there, but if push comes to shove then sometimes you get lost in the shuffle and for this I apologize. If you unfollow me, I’ll likely notice and follow you back then if you fell into this category and we can work to make things right. I’m trying to make this one happen less and less.
You don’t Tweet in English- I think it’s wonderful that the Internet is filled with people that speak various languages, but unfortunately I only speak English and can grok a bit of Latin at best. If you’re Tweeting in another language that’s really cool, but I’m not going to follow what I can’t read at all. Maybe someday I’ll learn, but thank you for the follow. I assume you’re better than me and can read multiple languages or you wouldn’t have done so.
You are clearly a spammer- Twitter has gotten better at catching these, but if you’re a spammer (either automated or just a person that’s an obvious spammer/company) but I don’t follow back people that are just trying to sell their book, diet or new type of kitty litter.
Your follow ratios are fucked- These come in two categories. First; I have literally been followed by people following 30,000+ other people, and with 4000 people following them. There is literally no way that a human can parse that much information, or actually care about what I have to say. I will never follow these people back and they are generally also spammers, or soon to be spammers. No thanks. Then there’s the people who just make some bad choices on Twitter. Try to keep your ratio at no worse than 1:1. 0.9:1 is better, as it shows that you aren’t following every spam-bot back yourself and that you likely actually listen to the conversation as it happens. I see a lot of people that are following 400, but only have 40 in return or worse. That’s a 10:1 ratio and uncool. I could expound on this for a while, but basically if you’re following way too many, then I’m not following you back likely. There are occasional exceptions, but that’s the general rule. Your ratios can be a tad off if you’re still in the sub 100 following/followers area. Everyone gets room to learn.
You don’t Tweet enough- These happen to sometimes be people with screwed up ratios, and it totally confuses me. I generally assume they are about to turn into spammers. I got followed today by someone that was following 1,300 people and followed by 100. She had tweeted 4 times. Why in the world would you follow 1,300 people but only tweet 4 times?!?! I’m almost never one to complain about over-tweeting and I’d much rather see a person with active and healthy conversations than someone with none.
And finally: You aren’t interesting- Ouch. I know that hurts doesn’t it? These are rare, but sometimes if someone is borderline on all of the above things then this really becomes the make or break factor. Actually it can break all of the others pretty easily. If you never @reply, and don’t say at least one thing that makes me think, “That’s something interesting” in your first front page on Twitter then I generally don’t follow you back. Most people luckily are actually interesting.
On the bright side, there’s some people I try to always follow back:
People at an event: Unless you are terribly boring, blatently whoring out a product, or something else then if you were at an event I attended I will likely follow you back no matter what. I tried to follow back every single person from Podcamp Pittsburgh (#PCPBG3) regardless of ratios and stuff because they were all cool people and many were still learning about Twitter.
People from Boston: Again, unless you terribly violate some of the above then if you are from Boston or nearby I will likely follow you back. I figure there’s a good chance of running into you and it’s pretty embarrassing to have not followed back someone. Plus, we already have something in common and likely know many of the same people
You are friend with my friends: If you’re talking a lot with my friends in your first page on Twitter then I’ll likely follow you back. My friends/network can vet people for me.
We’ve had a conversation: If you’ve @replied me for something I’ve said, then I’ll likely follow you back. Ditto if you commented on a photo of mine on Flickr or something. Conversation makes me think that I’ll have more of it in the future, which is what I want.
Growing your network is hard and you have to make a lot of decisions along the way. It sometimes conflicts with the fact that you want to keep your signal to noise ratios solid, but at the same time increase your voice and reach. Everyone’s got their own guidelines and methods of doing things. These aren’t the “right” wants, but just my ways of doing it.
How do you determine who to follow and who to ignore and risk having unfollow you?
