social media strategy

Your Blog Won’t Save the World

Meta’s deci­sion to end their part­ner­ships with fact check­ing orga­ni­za­tions set off a firestorm online this week. Apart from the expect­ed and under­stand­able frus­tra­tion with Mark Zucker­berg and the role mis­in­for­ma­tion on his plat­forms play in shap­ing pub­lic opin­ion, there’s been the usu­al wave of peo­ple look­ing for alter­na­tives to social. This man­i­fests as a famil­iar refrain to revive blogs and the web we lost.

It’s not going to happen.

Set aside the fact that I’ve cho­sen to blog about this: in a world with­out an acces­si­ble RSS read­er, we lack two things: an effec­tive dis­tri­b­u­tion mech­a­nism AND the habit­u­at­ed web brows­ing that was com­mon­place before the social media rev­o­lu­tion. Real­i­ty is that dis­tri­b­u­tion has always been paid, going back to Sears and Roe­buck mail­ing cat­a­logs across the coun­try. It’s what’s sus­tained ad-sup­port­ed media. Paid dis­tri­b­u­tion has been an effec­tive short­cut to growth for­ev­er and it con­tin­ues to win over owned channels.

Think of the pend­ing Tik­Tok ban, or any­time Insta­gram crash­es. Every­one screams, “this is why you need to own your chan­nels so you can own your audi­ence.” It’s exhaust­ing because no one invests in owned chan­nels mean­ing­ful­ly, or has­n’t in some time, and the peo­ple say­ing this know it. And where are they shout­ing this? On the very social media they’re decry­ing! Why? Because it’s where the audi­ence is!

Imag­ine what would hap­pen if the bud­gets that have been ded­i­cat­ed to pro­duc­tion and media for social chan­nels shift­ed to web­sites and newslet­ters! As some­one who came up in the first wave of cor­po­rate blogs, it’s easy to for­get how gen­uine­ly cre­ative those sites and expe­ri­ences were. There’s a rea­son waves of jour­nal­ists were hired by brands to lead edi­to­r­i­al — they need­ed fan­tas­tic con­tent to con­vince peo­ple to vis­it repeat­ed­ly. I still have close friend­ships with folks who ran sites like Coke Jour­ney and oth­ers. They were fas­ci­nat­ing exper­i­ments in what was pos­si­ble with online chan­nels. Unsur­pris­ing­ly, they’re all gone now.

It’s not because I don’t enjoy mem­o­ries of that time, but it’s fool­ish to think it’s any­thing more than nos­tal­gia now. Being added to a blogroll was the orig­i­nal Team Fol­low­back. It was thrilling to join com­mu­ni­ties of like-mind­ed cul­tur­al crit­ics back then, but that quick­ly gave way to exact­ly the kind of paraso­cial rela­tion­ships we expe­ri­ence on social today.

So what can we do about it?

For my part, I strong­ly rec­om­mend invest­ing in owned con­tent and chan­nels to my clients for all the rea­sons enu­mer­at­ed above. Every­thing starts with con­tent. Always has. Where we’ve lost sight of things as com­mu­ni­ca­tors and mar­keters is believ­ing we have a turnkey solu­tion to suc­cess. It’s not as sim­ple as push­ing cam­paigns out their door like they’re on a con­vey­or belt and expect any­one to care.

Take it from me: bad con­tent, even with tremen­dous paid spend against it, does­n’t help you achieve your goals. There’s sim­ply too much of it for any­one to pay atten­tion. Addi­tion­al­ly, you need to have a pro­found under­stand­ing of your audi­ence and what it takes not just to reach them, but engage them in ways that are measurable.

Don’t feel defeat­ed. Take it as a chal­lenge, first to your­self and then to the online com­mu­ni­ty you hope to build. Start small. Do some­thing every day, or as often as you can, whether that’s writ­ing some­thing, or cre­at­ing visu­als that need a home on the inter­net. You can still build audi­ences for con­tent if you have a strong point of view. Most impor­tant­ly, believe it yourself.

How I’m Managing My 2025 Channel Strategy

So, it’s some­how 2025 and *extreme­ly Jim Anchow­er voice* it’s been a while since I rapped at ya.

How was 2024? Pret­ty great! I fell back­ward into con­sult­ing in late 2023, work­ing with a for­mer col­league in what was prob­a­bly the most reward­ing chap­ter of my career to date. Per­son­al­ly — and I’ll update my media diet in a sep­a­rate post — we trav­eled more than we have in years, with trips that took us back to the Upper Penin­su­la, to Seat­tle and to Point Reyes Sta­tion, Cal­i­for­nia. Mag­i­cal, really.

As I’ve his­tor­i­cal­ly done — you can check the archives — this is the time of year I remem­ber that I’ve had this blog since 2008. It feels insane. Now that I’m an *entre­pre­neur,* I plan to spend more time here, with mix of posts about things that inter­est me, plus pro­fes­sion­al thought lead­er­ship where it makes sense, both for com­mu­ni­ca­tions and mar­ket­ing, plus indus­try obser­va­tions for things that puz­zle me.

For now, I’ll just update on where you can find me online.

  • Bluesky is where you’ll find me in cul­tur­al crit­ic mode. If I haven’t fol­lowed you there, it’s only because I’m being very selec­tive about what dis­course I’m engag­ing. Over­whelm­ing­ly, it’s music crit­ics I’ve been read­ing for twen­ty years.
  • Threads is where I’m choos­ing to rebuild my tech PR acu­men. It is wild how much has changed in tech media, both in terms of out­lets and play­ers. What I’m find­ing are far more enthusiast/influencer voic­es in the space. This isn’t alto­geth­er sur­pris­ing, but Threads will take some tun­ing. I nev­er *real­ly* left tech, but it’s fair to say I built some dis­tance over the last five years. My tol­er­ance for vapor­ware is at an all-time low.
  • LinkedIn is unadul­ter­at­ed con­tent mar­ket­ing and thought lead­er­ship. What I learned in my first con­sult­ing gig is that, true to form, I enjoy high impact trans­for­ma­tion work the most. Com­mu­ni­ca­tions is in dire need of new think­ing, strate­gies, tac­tics, mea­sure­ment and evan­ge­lism of all the above, and I’m shar­ing that on LinkedIn.
  • Insta­gram is where I fol­low the bands and venues I love, and share music and pho­tog­ra­phy infre­quent­ly via Sto­ries and even more rarely on the feed.
  • The Sto­ry­graph is where I’m track­ing what I read.
  • Let­ter­boxd is where I track what I’m watching.

But what about every­thing else?

Well, I only scroll Tik­Tok and rarely share any­thing there. Do I feel like I need to do more direct-to-cam­era post­ing? Sure. Will Tik­Tok be where that hap­pens? Maybe.

How about YouTube? Same as above. It’s an amaz­ing, if over­whelm­ing, enter­tain­ment and edu­ca­tion plat­form. Right now I’m obsessed with Apple pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and Black­stone grid­dle recipes!

Don’t even get me start­ed with Face­book. It’s hard to imag­ine a plat­form that has­n’t been gut­ted like Twit­ter meet­ing the same end. The more plat­forms inject “relat­ed” con­tent into the already over­crowd­ed time­line, the more apt I am to check out. Who thinks we have a con­tent sup­ply short­age? Nobody.

Final­ly, I think the notion that social media is in a death spi­ral is over­rat­ed. Do I think some plat­forms are doubt­less head­ed for the exit? Cer­tain­ly. There are demo­graph­ic fac­tors and gen­er­al malaise at play across this land­scape. But do I think peo­ple don’t enjoy con­nect­ing with one anoth­er in fun, if not mean­ing­ful ways online? Absolute­ly not. 

In fact, in my pro­fes­sion­al opin­ion, I’m see­ing more orga­ni­za­tions, dri­ven entire­ly by cost and the real­i­ty of a rav­aged media land­scape, lean even hard­er into syn­di­cat­ing con­tent on their social chan­nels. Does it work? No. Could it? Maybe! But nobody is ready yet to walk away entirely.

What’s the Future of Blogging?

Two inter­est­ing things about blog­ging lately:

First from Mar­co Arment

Then from Robert Scoble on why he’s using G+ and Face­book for blog­ging.

I tend to agree with the for­mer, but I’d much rather do what Scoble is doing. Why? Because it’s much lighter weight than com­ing here to write AND it does­n’t have the audi­ence built-in that oth­er social net­works do. I see that Share but­ton when I’m in Gmail and think, “That would be so easy!”

What’s keep­ing me from mak­ing the switch? Audi­ence. Sure, I have nev­er been good about writ­ing every day, but Word­Press makes it easy for peo­ple to find stuff I’ve writ­ten about since I start­ed blog­ging. Google+ is get­ting bet­ter at help­ing peo­ple find me in the con­text of oth­er search results, but it’s not quite the same.

But why not LinkedIn? Tum­blr? Medi­um? They’re all inter­est­ing places. I often think I should use LinkedIn as my default social net­work and share out to Twit­ter from it!

Put anoth­er way: why should­n’t I switch to G+ or Medi­um, you know, beyond own­ing my platform?

To me, the long tail ben­e­fits are worth­while. Word­Press is eas­i­ly book­marked and shared. Google+ is a neat lit­tle ecosys­tem, but that’s just it: it wants to be self-con­tained in a dif­fer­ent way that most oth­er networks.

Why You Need a Personal Content Strategy

Scoble’s post on scal­able liv­ing offers some inter­est­ing insight into how peo­ple use social plat­forms to com­mu­ni­cate with audi­ences. What I find most inter­est­ing are his views on the role of Face­book in how he shares con­tent. Here’s a key pas­sage from what he wrote:

So, what role does a blog have in this new world. It cer­tain­ly is NOT cen­tral­iz­ing my life. Face­book is — by far — the best place to do that. This morn­ing alone I lis­tened to sev­er­al songs in the car. Do you real­ly want me to post every time that hap­pens here? No way. But on Face­book that’s eas­i­ly dealt with. Even bet­ter Face­book usu­al­ly fil­ters that stuff out and Face­book gets bet­ter over time at fig­ur­ing out what you want to engage with and what you don’t. If you saw every­thing I did on my pro­file come through on your home feed you would unfol­low with­in an hour. Instead 330,000 new peo­ple in the past year alone have sub­scribed to me on Face­book. Why? It’s scal­able liv­ing and hav­ing great inbound makes life more interesting.

Now, Scoble is an edge case, to put it mild­ly. Few of us com­mu­ni­cate on social plat­forms with even a frac­tion of the peo­ple who fol­low him. But how many of us would even con­sid­er using Face­book to share con­tent that’s relat­ed to our work as social media pro­fes­sion­als? Would your friends be inter­est­ed in your views on Google+? I doubt it. I know mine wouldn’t.

Most of what Scoble dis­cuss­es is how we share and con­sume infor­ma­tion. He notes that Face­book’s algo­rithm helps you make choic­es about what you see and what you don’t. That’s not true of oth­er plat­forms and if you’re like me, you don’t mind infor­ma­tion over­load. But have you giv­en much thought to how you share content?

Con­tin­ue read­ing →

The Problem of Platform Proliferation

What’s your Pin­ter­est strat­e­gy? Don’t have one? Panic!

If you spend time scan­ning the social web, you’ve prob­a­bly read this sen­ti­ment some­where. You see it every time a new plat­form launch­es. The ser­vice goes live and a throng of social media experts rush to judg­ment, assur­ing you that your busi­ness is doomed if you don’t stand up a pres­ence and take advan­tage of the lat­est craze.

Don’t believe them? Do so at your peril!

OK, that may be a bit extreme. If you’re a social media pro­fes­sion­al, you’re famil­iar with this sto­ry. It’s con­fus­ing! You prob­a­bly want the brand you rep­re­sent to be on the cut­ting edge of the social space, but how do you make your case? Will it be worth the effort and resources? Will you lose your mind try­ing to pub­lish to every­thing? What if peo­ple think your brand pres­ence is, um, lame?

Take a deep breath. Use your judg­ment and fig­ure out what works best for you. Chances are you’re the per­son respon­si­ble for mak­ing deci­sions. It needs to be the right fit for your function.

What if the right Pin­ter­est strat­e­gy is none at all? Adri­enne Rhodes sug­gests that may be the right answer for your brand over at Social Media Today.

See? It’s pos­si­ble to say that the best strat­e­gy is none at all.

Most impor­tant things to ask your­self when eval­u­at­ing new platforms.

  • Fit. Does it make sense for your brand?
  • Lev­el of effort. Can you par­tic­i­pate effec­tive­ly in the com­mu­ni­ty you’re joining?
  • Return on invest­ment. Ask your­self what you’re get­ting out of it. Trust me, if you don’t, your key stake­hold­ers will. And do bet­ter than just ask your­self. Mea­sure, mea­sure, measure!

So the next time you see sto­ries about the new plat­form gold rush, don’t wor­ry if you’re not first to stake your claim. Focus your resources on the plat­forms that are most impor­tant to your busi­ness first before spread­ing your­self (and your con­tent) too thin across the social web.