Mark Allen Roberts
.-= Mark Allen Roberts´s last blog ..Mentor Moment #8: “Haste makes Waste” =-.

Ken Wheaton’s last blog post..Saving the World, One Tweetup at a Time

@Ken – Sincere thanks for responding. Although we clearly disagree on this one, I really appreciate you leaving a comment.

Just a couple of points of clarification.

- It did not take me a month to notice the column. I read the blog the minute it was published, as I have all AdAge blogs on an RSS feed. It took me one hour after I read it to write it. I then held the post for 6 weeks to make sure I still felt the same way. I did, so I published it.

- I agree that it was satirical to some degree. However, as commenters above and others on Twitter have mentioned, it was not wholly interpreted that way. Probably not the most objective audience i recognize, but clearly if it was entirely satirical it was unsuccessful in that conveyance.

- I did not say, nor do I believe, that AdAge does a poor job covering social media or digital marketing. If it did, I would not subscribe to the RSS feeds. I do feel AdAge (and it was not alone by any stretch of the imagination) missed the boat at the dawn of the digital marketing age (I was working as an Internet consultant in 1994, and have been a reader since 1988). My opinion is that AdAge (perhaps rightly) is taking a largely wait and see approach to social media as a discipline (if it can be called that – perhaps not). And while many individual items about social media have made AdAge and continue to, I don’t feel it’s appropriate for you or any other major writer to slam a fast moving, emerging marketing discipline – for laughs or otherwise.

- I’m not sure how disclosing that I’ve offered to write blog posts for AdAge is relevant. I never said nobody should read AdAge. I said that in my opinion your column was baseless and childish. But in the interest of disclosure, I’m happy to report that I called and emailed you several times about writing for your AdAge Small Agency blog. You apparently did not and do not have an interest in me doing so, which is fine. I’ve got several other writing gigs now, and I’m sure your blogs will continue to thrive without my contributions. For the record, however, I’m still interested.

- I don’t believe letting people know that I’ve written something constitutes as begging for attention. If it does, you might want to look at the multiple emails I get from AdAge each day that do the exact same thing. Twitter is opt in. Facebook is opt in. Email is opt in. Easy to turn the channel if it bothers you.

- I would argue that even a cursory review of my work would indicate that I am far from humorless, and in fact generally include a great deal of humor in my work. Additionally, I am by no means a social media “guru”, and certainly do not proclaim or advertise as such. Anyone who says they have something as fast moving and dynamic as social media figured out, by definition does not.

- Because I have been in marketing for 20 years, and digital marketing for nearly 15, I very much do NOT believe that social media is all powerful. In fact, I’m genuinely delighted that you and I are on precisely the same page with regard to social media’s limitations as a marketing outreach tactic. To me, social media’s highest calling is as a customer loyalty and retention mechanism, not as a customer acquisition mechanism. My post about the difference between “social media” and “social media marketing” can be found here. http://www.convinceandconvert.com/integrated-marketing-and-media/when-a-verb-became-a-noun-the-conflicting-faces-of-social-media/

My post about the fact that we all need to “Stop Swooning Over Social Media” is here http://www.convinceandconvert.com/integrated-marketing-and-media/stop-swooning-over-social-media/

While I do indeed work with agencies and corporations on their social media (and email) strategy, I am by no means a mindless cheerleader, and I’d hope that a review of any of my posts beyond the one upon which you commented would indicate that clearly.

Again, thanks for making the effort to comment. I sincerely hope you’ll return again under friendlier circumstances, as all perspectives are valued and welcomed here – and that’s why social media kicks ass.

Here’s a clue: Pretty much anyone working in marketing and writing about it knows that social media is a tool that, like a thirty-second spot, is good at doing some things, not so good at others. It’s good at connecting people, following consumer response. It’s NOT good, for the most part, at mass-scale product launches.

This is about the fifth time I’ve come here today to counter your utterly ridiculous and over the top post, but I kept deleting my comment because … well, why bother? Then I thought that might be a little condescending on my part, not to treat you like an equal. Besides, you keep trying to drive traffic to it as if begging for someone to notice.

So I noticed the post. I also noticed that it exactly proved my point about the type of humorless, social-media ‘gurus’ out there trying to “convince and convert” everyone to the belief that there’s nothing social media can’t do.

Ken Wheaton’s last blog post..Saving the World, One Tweetup at a Time