Of course Facebook still wants your advertising dollars – that part of the equation will never change. But in addition to the ad spend what they really want is for companies to create useful apps that connect with consumers lives. This means going beyond passively clicking on a Like button for a status update or brand and creating something that provides value.

It’s a notion that a lot of brands entrenched in old school communications (“People will really care about this advertisement/press release/status update!”) are going to struggle mightily with. This new move  takes the brainstorming process of looking at what’s already worked within an industry, reinventing the wheel and launching it and completely smashes it. Will brands still need to generate good content? Absolutely. But the firms they’re working with aren’t designed — nor are they staffed — to deliver interesting, sharable content.

As someone counseling senior leaders, I can already see traditional PR firms roles being minimized in social media while digital firms have their responsibility grow because, quite frankly, they have the developers and understand metrics and how the technology works. Sure, the communications professional can draft the language, but the clickthrough rates, time spent on a site and conversions are not terms, let alone digital marketing concepts, that PR firms have incorporated into their daily routines or vernacular. It’s why the Huffington Post succeeded while other sites die – they know what makes people click and study the hell out of their site traffic.

It’s an app, app, app, app world, folks, and as a CEO recently told me: “I’d rather put my money into digital marketing and social media because quite honestly press releases and stunts won’t help me sell cases.”

This post originally appeared on the Large Media blog.

September 16, 2011
PRSA’s T3PR: Theory, Tactics and Technology for High Tech Public Relations
New York, NY
Technology Crisis. Digital Age.

October 26, 2011
ACI’s Focus on Social Media, Business, Technology and the Law
New York, NY
Measuring Social Media’s Value to Your Business Processes in Order to Justify the Investment

I once went to speak at a school, and there was a 16-year-old girl. And the girl says to me, “You know what? I don’t care what I do, I just want to be famous.”

And I thought, you know, I should really just shoot her in the head because it would serve two things: It would make her famous as the girl that Jason Alexander shot in the head, and it would, you know, spare the world of the banality of the rest of her life.

And as my friend Spike Jones points out, this may be true of social media experts as well.

It is the HBR’s belief, much like mine in college, that great leaders are born with the executive talent and strategic judgment. The analogy I used in my argument was that it took a talented individual making the right decisions in the right position at the right time in order to be a successful leader. Think about Joe Montana for a minute and his career. Started off with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers (sorry Rae) in a dreadful situation before finally landing in San Francisco where he engineered the greatest comeback in the history of the Superbowl at Superbowl XXIII. Had he stayed in Tampa he would have never been considered the great leader he eventually became.

via Lori Laurent Smith

via Damian Rintelmann

The gist behind declaring a large number is mostly done to appease two groups: 1. Investors and 2. Advertisers. Here’s the problem: Your numbers, much like the issues bloggers ran into before allowing third parties to measure them, are meaningless. Don’t get me wrong – it’s great that scads of New York hipsters are checking in to H&M and receiving 10% off a multicolored, Made in Vietnam, scarf. It is. It’s also grossly misleading to suggest that people have embraced something– and even worse to suppose that they’re a business’s most loyal customer.

I’m not doubting the frequency of  a checkin — what I am questioning is the validity of the checkin as it relates to loyalty is akin to a “Like”, which as we know isn’t the same as “Love”.  I am also severely questioning why Foursquare flat out refuses to offer up more specific numbers, such as active users (those who’ve checked in within the past 30 days) unless it’s because people aren’t sticking with the platform.

A recent audit for a client targeting 35-54 year old females suggests that very few of their customers, including those in Manhattan and San Francisco, are actually using the service. Don’t feel bad, Foursquare, they weren’t using Facebook Places either. The most commentary on location-based anything related to this business was found on Yelp; no, not in the form of checkins to their stores but as reviews of their experience — something Foursquare doesn’t account for with a simple “I’m here”.

“You talking loud, but you ain’t saying nuthin…” – The Fugees

A single, former co-worker, Dad friend of mine posted a link on Facebook the other day that caught my attention and at first I thought it was about Social Media Celebrities. The blog post was really about the single urban professionals who on the surface are into being in a relationship but realistically they really aren’t interested in being involved at all; while I can’t directly relate to this dating phenomenon, I can say that I see similar behavior online from the Promosexuals in the social media industry – on the surface you think “Wow, they must touch a lot of client business” when in reality they have no agenda other than promoting themselves. Here are the sure-tell signs that you’re dealing with a promosexual.

Sign #1: They Tweet a lot between 9 AM and 5 PM

Ever notice something? Those of us actually doing work can barely find the time to use Twitter during work hours. Yet the Social Media Promosexual has amassed tens of thousands of followers by being available pretty much all day. There’s a reason for that: they’re not doing billable work.

Sign #2: They’re at every social media party

Yes, there’s a certain subset of people that appear at every party. Don’t believe me? Find someone you suspect of being a Promosexual and search Flickr. If they’re in more than a few albums then they’re part of the PromosexualSet.

Sign #3: They take tons of vanity pictures

This doesn’t need a lot of explanation other than to say ‘Google Image search their name’. Or click here.

Sign #4: They don’t dress like someone you work with

I’ve been in enough meetings and pitches to know how to dress. No, you don’t show up wearing ripped jeans and a sport coat and think you’re “bad ass”. You look like an aging adult struggling to deal with his or her own age. Conversely, it’s never a good idea to show up in an ascot. Yes, there is a thing called corporate culture and those of us who’ve worked in-house know that when you meet with oncologists you wear a suit, and when you’re meeting with the CMO your personal SXSW rules don’t apply just because you bought a totally awesome k-rad t-shirt from Hot Topic to go under your H&M sport coat.

Sign #5: They never talk about clients.

The dead giveaway is when the Social Media PromoSexual speaks at conferences they’ve never able to actually mention a project they worked on. There’s a reason for that – they’ve never actually worked on a client’s business. Sure, we’ve all done consulting and not been there to see the fruits of our labor come to life first-hand, but the reality is that the “rock stars” of the industry really don’t do anything. They might create theories, or come up with lists based on other people’s work — but they’re not actually practitioners.

Conclusion

Ultimately the PromoSexual does actually serve a purpose for the rest of the social media community – at this point they’re mouthpieces for the industry and are able to bask in the glory of their non-billableness, but not able to actually draw the respect of any paying client. Realistically they’re a glaring example of the exact opposite thing of what senior leadership should be. Don’t get me wrong – at one time they were communicating a message that resonated with a lot of people looking to “be them”, but much like MySpace and other shiny objects in social media, their time has passed. Now excuse me, I have to get to work.