Reading time ~6 minutes
Social media is all the rage these days. Everybody is glued to their phone frantically checking for likes, updates and twitter verbal jousts they can take part in. Long gone are the days where we just read the newspaper and watch the evening news on TV. While the digital world has unleashed upon us a glut of information. I can’t help but feel overwhelmed by the endless availability of information, some good, the large majority of it horrendous.
Joe Rogan and Penn Jillette recently commented on this on Rogan’s podcast, comparing the information we take in to the food in our diet: We have access to more caloric and abundant food than ever. In fact, it’s the first time in the history of humanity that food is by and large so abundant that most of us never have to worry about starving. Yet, most of that food is processed garbage and in order to stay healthy we have to be careful about the type of food we eat. The same goes for information. There is today more information in a single issue of the New York Times than a 17th-century peasant would have come across in his lifetime. Therefore, we have to be very careful about the type of information we digest, as most sources of “information” have proven to convey mostly garbage, and the social media platforms have been proven to not be immune to this phenomenon. Check out Single Serves ep. 103 with Peter Sobchak to hear more on the topic.
On social media in the design industry.
Design businesses have gotten on the bandwagon and are liberally sharing their share of milquetoast and uninspired content. It’s not because everybody else is mindlessly doing it that it makes sense to partake. Now I’m not advocating that social media has no place in a design firm’s marketing, communications and business development efforts. I’m no luddite and I can see that well done, social media can be tremendously beneficial. What I’m advocating for is to conscientiously and deliberately decide which platforms make sense for you and what you should say on these platforms. Getting on social media without a solid strategy because everybody else is doing it is one of the worst reasons to do it. Now that this is out of the way, let’s talk about how to make the best use of it.
The critical piece that’s missing from a lot of firms’ social media accounts is a coherent message that is consistently supported by high-quality content. Said message, cannot be born out of thin air, it is a reflection of the firm’s culture, values and purpose. Without a solidly pre-established cultural foundation, all efforts to communicate are fruitless as the message is likely to change day-to-day and season-to-season. The firms that are most adept at social media are those that have both the resources and the cultural capital to tackle social media and it’s ever-demanding need for more and more content. Not to mention that the “hacks” required to be successful at this are constantly changing at the whim of social media companies. It’s a constant game of catching up as the algorithms change and what worked yesterday to get some attention does not anymore. Without that cultural foundation, your social media accounts are basically destined for your family and friends and the occasional wandering client who was curious enough to look you up. In addition, every platform has a very specific audience they cater to and it doesn’t make sense for everyone to be on all platforms that are available.
It is also a very dangerous game to put all your assets and bet the house, namely your content and contacts, on someone else’s platform. When social media networks die, and they do (I’m looking at you Myspace and Vine), you’re left with nothing. That audience is gone unless they were faithful enough to you to follow you wherever you are. But that’s only given to a selected elite, as for most of us, we’re not big or established enough to have such a following.
In his book “The Thank You Economy”, Gary Vee explains very clearly and in great detail what social media is good for: connecting directly and without filters to your audience. Treating it like a one-way channel like pre-digital platforms is a mistake that many companies have made and continue to do. It’s a tone-deaf thing to do to post on social media and not engage with your audience when they’re trying to communicate to you. As such, social media have brought us ever closer to our audience and not using to that effect is a crime. I highly recommend Vaynerchuk’s book for anyone interested in upping their marketing a social media game and specifically learning more about this.
Where to start?
In order to define that cultural foundation, it is critical to look at what your firm is about and really spend the time distilling that to its essence, so that the way the firm is positioned (what it does and who it does it for) is clearly defined as well as what it stands for (its purpose, mission and values - how it does it) is crystal clear. This takes time and is a critical part of a creative professional services firm success. Undifferentiated firms who do not have a strong sense of self, will go in many directions because as soon as there is a new and exciting idea idea floating around, they get excited and dilute their efforts by pursuing yet another endeavour that’s not necessarily aligned with their core mission and therefore wasting precious few resources.
There are many things that a firm can do to grow and find clients before getting on social media. One of these is to develop valuable content that lives on on a platform that the business owns (namely its website and in-house print publications). Everything else, including social media, should serve two purposes only: first, to get people to eventually land on your website, because as mentioned earlier, you do not want to be at the mercy of someone else’s good will when it comes to the ownership of your own content and second, to open direct communication channels with your audience, which social platforms are unmatched at enabling us to do so. I cringe when I see businesses forgoing a website altogether and using instagram as their sole portfolio. When that boat sinks, they will sink with it. Remember that there is no such thing as too big to fail.
Once you have that process established, social media, carefully selected based on where your potential clients are active, makes perfect sense. At that point it is time to lay out a strategy for the kind of content you want to put out and do it. Until then, better to stay away from social media and focus on spending your limited resources on building the aforementioned foundation and producing content that you own and control.
Arnaud Marthouret is the founder of rvltr and leads their strategy, visual communications and media efforts. He has helped numerous architects and interior designers promote themselves in their best light - pun intended - in order to help them run more effective practices and grow in a meaningful way.
If you have questions about this article or rvltr, or want to chat about your strategy and communications, you can leave a comment, share with a friend, or reach him at arnaud{at}rvltr.studio.