“Well I’ve got 104 friends…”
| February 28, 2010 | Posted by Ross under Random Fillings |
Alan Partridge in a conversation with Peter Baxendale Thomas of the Norfolk Farmer’s Union:-
Alan: “I’ve probably got more friends than you’ve got cows.”
Peter: “This is ridiculous.”
Alan: “How many cows have you got?”
Peter: “I’ve got a hundred cattle.”
Alan: “Yeah, I’ve got a hundred and four friends.”
Reminds me of some of the conversations I’ve heard when people are talking about how many facebook ‘friends’ or LinkedIn connections they have…or worse, when some agencies brag about how many Twitter followers or facebook fans they have managed to acquire for their clients.
Twitter is big news now, facebook is firmly established as a true social network that has become successfully commercialised for lots of companies and LinkedIn is a dream service for some businesses, especially recruitment agencies – but the common theme across most of these social media platforms is the gold rush of brands and agencies that are forgetting themselves while they try and force commercial success by playing a numbers game rather than by looking to build a smaller list of relevant, quality contacts or followers.
Often the agencies themselves are prepared to sacrifice quality for numbers in the worry that they cannot sell digital or social media services if they appear to only have a handful of followers on Twitter – I’ve just done a quick check against the Twitter account of one of the north’s premier advertising agencies and the first ‘person’ listed as a follower is a cheap flights spammer…so I looked at another big agency and the 8th follower listed is a spammer that offers free pet services (avatar picture is two dogs having sex)…and then I stopped picking on the more traditional offline agencies that are trying to cross over. I figured that the digital specialists would fair better, so checked out 2 of the better digital agencies in Leeds and lo and behold, both had followers in the first page of results who were ‘sex link’ spammers.
I just don’t get it. Why allow the crap of the internet to follow you on Twitter, and why follow the crap yourselves as all of the above sample of 4 do? Because you think bigger numbers looks good or, much worse, you’re too busy to tidy up your shop window?
I know, I know, I can be accused of looking at them in micro detail, but it really doesn’t take long to apply a bit of care and attention to your accounts and why let your business continue to have any implied association with such garbage?
In the real world there is no way any of these businesses or any brand that uses social media would allow an unbalanced religious nutcase to spout biblical dribble in their car park or a scantily clad woman to offer nude pictures of herself to people who walked into their stores, or for a random ‘entrepreneur’ to try and push cheap flights onto clients that were arriving at their head office for a meeting…..so why allow it online in your own digital real estate?
Forget the numbers, it’s not a mathematical competition, just show a bit of class and care and then see how social media can start to make a small difference to your business or to your client’s business.
Final Note: I am indebted to Michael Wood of Bradford for first using that Alan Partridge quote in relation to social media crowd-gathering, so thank you Michael.
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Hi Ross liked your piece above, just moved from a large agency myself
It’s new territory for lots of them and the reason they have some of these issues
is because they haven’t had the experience inhouse now it’s a gold rush catch up situation.
Social Media is not going away and traditional agencies have real problems monetising these areas with clients as it can be done for free, althoughit can be time consuming it’s the future.
Ian, thanks for the comment; agree with what you say and appreciate you adding to the post.
Good luck with your work, like your website and great copy too.
Never a truer word written too.
We live in an agency age that is confused. It understands the difference between getting a lot of people to walk into a showroom and look at a Rolls if they can’t afford to buy one. It knows that there is no benefit and a lot of harm in allowing chavs to wear your prestige clothing range but it forgets all these ideas when it comes to an online word.
Not only does it forget the idea – Dogs having sex? Of course they can follow us! – but it does not really know how to segment a market online to ensure they get a decent audience.
Perfect article. I run a Linkedin training course and the first thing I do is see how many contacts people have, in a nicely kinaesthetic way, then I point out that it doesn’t matter. It’s how many of those people you know and what you do with your contacts.
Nice to see a marketing chap saying the same thing!
Regards
Stephen
Gradually its becoming apparent that the majority of people gloabally are online and its part of the fabric of their live whether 2% or 100%.
The comments and article are spot on, its not the only thing to use. One of the most im portant aspects is the ability for dialogues not monlogues. Which go forward to sharing information not shouting oout blindly.
From sharing informative authentic and generous content about your friend fans followers and supply chain. creating trust and seeing the long term goals of their networks sharing your information.
A good example below form the above article, and we have all looked now at Michaels blog:
Final Note: I am indebted to Michael Wood of Bradford for first using that Alan Partridge quote in relation to social media crowd-gathering, so thank you Michael.
Cheers
I was just gratified to find out I have significantly more twitter followers than my boss or colleague with only occasional parps about the higgs boson and cycling road blocks. I then googled ‘alan partridge 104 friends’ and found this. i have not enjoyed the internet this much since 1998.