If you can’t see the video above, click here, or watch it on Vimeo.

I watched this video this week by Scott Stratten (regularly known as @unmarketing), which is an hour long presentation on what Social Media is really about: social – a.k.a. relationship.

You know I don’t do this often – so given that I am posting this with little more than what I think, I thoroughly recommend you watch it.

My favourite bits:

  1. The opening story that Scott tells. N0 matter how advanced we want to get with Social Media (you know, my frameworks and all), we have to remember so many businesses still are getting the most basic customer service horribly messed up.
  2. Automated tweets and other Social Media fails because it is pretending to be present – and the most important thing about Social Media is the reply – which you can’t do off an automated tweet or cross-platform status update. Very good insight here.
  3. His example of getting people to understand how powerful Social Media is (9:30 in.)
  4. “Social Media doesn’t change the fact that relationships take time.”
  5. “People still use videotapes… Holy monkey nuts.”
  6. Scott’s admission of denying digital sales of his book in order to get better New York Times Best Seller List ranking, as they only count physical sales. Authenticity is a big thing to him – which I like.
  7. Every line of information you ask for on an online form decreases the chance of someone filling it from 10% – 30%. (Wow.)
  8. His story of learning that the volume-play from the early Twitter days was just over the top and doesn’t work. (And now understands value is where it’s at.) He now regrets following everyone back.
  9. Increase people knowing you, liking you and trusting you (always good to hear again.)
  10. Create great content on Twitter. In other words, craft useful 120-character tweets, rather than just sending updates. (This is what I call being an Active Authority.)

And yes, I so liked the keynote that I pre-ordered his book (my affiliate link – commission for sharing this with you ;-)

Your Leading Thoughts

  • My question for you – what is your favourite bit, and why?

Enjoy.
Scott

Archived Comments

  • http://twitter.com/98rosjon Jonny Rose

    Hi Scott!

    The enduring nugget I took away from this talk was the need to “evoke emotion” with our content – whether for marketing a product, or, as you have discussed before, in an attempt to stimulate discussion.

    Scott S’s view that *extremes* of emotion leading to content being spread e.g. “This made me laugh/appalled – I must show it to you so you can share my joy/ disgust” would feed nicely into any successive posts you write on ‘polarising’ the community as it overlaps with:

    /polarising-people-how-far-...

    Also, I was surprised to see Scott S. bemoaning the ’10 Steps to…’ style content as this is a content staple that I have seen championed regularly by other SM authorities as a means to get hits.

    I appreciated hearing his unique perspective and frank style – Maybe he should (un)market himself as ‘Canada’s Chris Brogan’!

  • / Scott Gould

    Jonny my man.

    You are right on with the observation. To be honest, Scott is actually contradictory here.

    On one hand, he talks about viral optimisation (making media spreadable), something that he does all the time and is a total volume based play that requires polarisation.

    But then he disses some of the tactics used in viral optimisation.

    Really, I think this is another way for him to polarise. Of course, we could call him on this, but I understand his tactic here.

    Chris’ comments on that post of mine that you refer too have greatly helped me. I’ve summarised what he said into: polarising gets people’s attention, but loving those people keeps their hearts.

  • Alastair

    Just listened to the video by Scott – pretty inspiring stuff. I particularly like the example he gives of changing the way he has to pitch ‘social media’ to different people. I deal with this regularly – when I’m talking to board level C-Suite it needs putting in different terms than if it’s the passionate (usually younger) new starter. Forget the techy terms and get back to business. I think too many people in our industry struggle with this, it was the same with the search engine optimisation industry in the last 10 years too. We need more people that can break down what we do into simple business language.

  • / Scott Gould

    Al

    You’re very right, and anyone worth their salt in all this knows to
    draw it back to general business success.

    I spent last Monday with some publishers and learnt some new ways to
    do this, as well as creating some content that really gets everything
    down to the bottom line in their language.

    I’ll see if I can get Scott to come and speak :-)

    Scott