#call me lame but this has turned into my favorite social media account

[thegetdownrebooter]

my blog is back, thank fucking god.

[nekkodiaries]

⌖ the 7th shot. ┆ second base. [ 0.7k words + 2 pics. ]

killstrike: oi, i waited for 30 mins for ur stupid ass n u didnt come ://

killstrike: hey .. its been 2 days 😐 this isnt funny r u actually mad at me

killstrike: im sorry for calling u stupid 😕 even tho u kind of are

killstrike: 😕😕😕 its been 5 days since ur last active. are you okay?

jay sighs as he finishes sending the last message. summer break's about to end and the way she's been inactive makes him feel like this little friendship they've made's about to end too. maybe he should have taken heeseung's advice and asked for her number. or any other social media account.

this feels all too repetitive of the last 'incidents' he's had with her. she ghosts him and he gets anxious, staring at the screen until that little button beside her icon turns green, messaging her a couple of times even though he isn't getting a reply back. each message he sends knocking down hard on his pride, but he continues to type away. it almost leaves him upset at how he's actively trying to build a friendship with her, and her not caring enough to update him.

but he shoos his anxious thoughts away, convincing himself that maybe he's overthinking this. that even though she teased and insulted him quite a lot, she'd never completely ghost jay without reason.

just like magic, his phone vibrates. jay sits up from his bed, eyes glued on the little chat box he has with notursniper. she just comes back with a lame "haha hi." without anything else. was she not going to address how she was gone for a week? was she going to dip again?

killstrike: haha hi your face.

jongseong did not mean for his words to come out so 'upset' and pointed, but he actually was.

notursniper: hey 🥺 did you not miss your favorite sniper,, hmph

killstrike: you were gone for a week and you didn't tell me 😐

notursniper: i didn't have a choice !! i sprained my hand and my wrist hurts too much to hold my phone 🥺 can't even game grrRRr.

oh. that's why she was away. he wonders why she keeps getting into little accidents— from catching fever to spraining her hand. so clumsy, this one. he chuckles and puts his phone down briefly, rubbing his palm on his face as it dawns on him just how stupid he was for getting so deep into his mind about her short absence.

notursniper: oh god, you waited for me the day i slipped hhhhHhh I'M SORRY 🥺😭

killstrike: nah it's no big deal. i DID worry bc of ur sudden absence though. not fun. 😐😐😐 killstrike: anyw. do u wanna play now? i haven't duo-ed since u went AWOL on me

notursniper: guess you're gonna go awol on duo for longer because i can't play rn notursniper: i'm lich relly typing w one hand because my wrist hurts like a raging bitch.

his thumbs come to the screen to tell her to take a rest but heeseung's words come to mind. maybe he can ask for her twitter? pubg isn't as fun without her as his partner, plus he wouldn't have to log in everyday just to reply to her. god knows he's only been using the game to talk to her and not to actually game.

he stares at his phone for a while, thumbs slightly trembling at the thought of asking her to talk somewhere else other than the app itself. jay is nervous this would change their dynamics. but is it really that deep? maybe it is. maybe it's not. maybe he's just overthinking this again. but she might think otherwise— maybe she assumes he wants something more than a platonic gamer-friendship with her (which he does) but he doesn't want to outright give up his pride for that. then again, if he doesn't do this, he realizes she might ghost again and he's the one who'll end up having a hard time. so with his toes curled in nervousness, he types out a message.

killstrike: would it be easier to talk on twitter? only if you're comfortable. :)

notursniper: are going to second base rn? 😳😳

killstrike: . loRD. i should not have apologized that day 🧎🏻

notursniper: i'm kidding ! 🤣 give me you're @ and i'll follow you.

killstrike: same as my ign.

notursniper: boo 👎 boring 👎

killstrike: i don't take insults from 9-year olds. now go follow me and let's talk there so you can rest your wrist.

masterlist. ┆ previous. — next.

summary: park jay lives life as a hot-headed gamer by day and.. well.. still a hot-headed gamer by night— except he secretly goes by the name killstrike. after losing a match, he finds himself trash-talking his teammate notursniper, who happens to be the mysterious classmate he's been admiring for over a year and more.

taglist [open] : @yvnjin-s @wondering-out-loud @rikisly @babystrlla @shinrjj @homelycat @annoyingbitch83 @fadedluvv @haerinism

permanent taglist: @duolingofanaccount @enhasengene

[blackfemmecharacterdependency]

Share a Lair 10 || Upgraded

Charlotte was extremely excited about Henry’s advancement results. He was now featured on Hero Tracks, and she was THE FIRST person to follow him! Hero Tracks was one of her favorite forms of social media. Hero Tracks (while mentioned before, hasn’t been explained, so… let’s).

Hero Tracks served as a progress and news tracker for your favorite heroes. General updates were for the public, but if you follow a hero, you get more updates and if you’re on the friends list, you get to see their own posts, read DETAILS that they would trust friends with. 

Charlotte generally followed and friended every hero that she met. Henry wasn’t previously on Hero Tracks, because he thought that sidekicks with tracks were lame. “Their hero has a page that has AND and features them. Getting a separate account is try hard,” he told her. So, whenever the Hero League reported his results to him, (which also gets sent to Charlotte, simultaneously), she posted his account from the Tower, followed the account, and congratulated him. Shortly afterwards, Max sent a friend request, which she accepted on Henry’s behalf, and Max also congratulated Henry, “Good  going! Hope this means you’ll move out soon!” She laughed and shook her head. She actually wanted the two of them to possibly work together at some point… and she wished that maybe they could train together. She nonchalantly dropped these desires to both of them at different times, subtly. Max definitely took it in. Henry shot her down.

But. A few days later, Henry received a message from the Hero League.

“I can’t believe my life,” Henry said, disappointed.

Charlotte glanced over and wondered, “What’s happened?” He shoved his phone to her and she read, then cheered, “Max is gonna be your Hero League appointed mentor and trainer?!? Lucky you!” She gave him the phone back with a huge smile. “I’m so proud of this.”

“You had something to do with this, didn’t you?”

“I told Max the same things that I told you and I guess he cared, because that message says that he personally requested this… and Henry… That is remarkable. He’s got global hero status. Henry… This could rocket your hero career.”

He sighed. He knew these things. He still didn’t like it. This meant that he sort of would have to report to Max… and… he still worked for Captain Man. When would he have PEACE, in this arrangement? He groaned and left her workspace to go call Jasper and complain to him about it. HE’D offer some type of empathy for Henry’s plight.

.

Honestly, it wasn’t bad being under Max’s mentorship and training. Henry found that even though he hated being around him casually, Max was pretty professional and patient with teaching him stuff. Sometimes, Henry could see in his expressions that he thought Henry should know more and was silently judging him for it. But, the one time that he brought it up, Max corrected him by saying, “I’m actually judging Captain Man. It’s almost like he never wanted you to take over for him… or maybe Swellview is too small for your talents. That’s also possible. Hiddenville was definitely too small for mine, and you’re under my wings now, so… your possibilities broaden.” Max gave him a sincere smile, then clapped his hands once and said, “Back to acrobatics lessons!”

Max was… a brilliant fighter! Henry was super impressed with his abilities, agility, and versatility. And, he wouldn’t say it yet, but he was truly grateful for the opportunity to work so closely with him. Also, he was seeing Max a lot differently. Whenever he was satisfied with Henry’s training progress, he said that he would select assignments to bring him on. ASSIGNMENTS. With SuperMax! Henry was not going to fanboy over it… openly. He just wanted to work hard, prove himself, and venture on those opportunities.

.

Piper decided a get together was in order, because since Henry began training with Max, he hadn’t been in Swellview as much. Hero League business took precedence over Swellview business and Max refuted several of Captain Man’s refusals to let Henry off for various reasons. Max’s requests took precedence. Captain Man was definitely pissed, but Piper missed her brother and friends. Charlotte hadn’t felt the same about Piper since she joined the team and started acting like the guys, but she still hung out with her whenever she got a chance, out of nostalgia for the kid that she used to love and Girl Code. Definitely didn’t make it a priority or effort, though.

There they were, all being at least civil and Piper suggested that they play “Sex, Kill Marry” or whatever the heck it was called. Charlotte rolled her eyes and listened to various requests and answers, from names that Piper spouted out.

Jasper thought for a moment, during his turn, “Hmmm… I guess I’d marry Timothy Chalamet, screw Matthew Daddario, and have to kill Dylan Minnette. (Only because I just don’t love him like the other two…)”

Henry complained, “I HATE THIS GAME. UGH. F word China McClain, K word Selena Gomez, marry Daisy Riddle.”

Piper told him, “That’s not even her name!”

Henry wasn’t to be deterred or have this lengthened. “That’s my answer! This is weird enough to play with my sister involved.”

So, when it was Charlotte’s turn and Piper said, “These three!” And she pointed at the three dudes in then room.

Max raised an eyebrow and gave her an amused glance. Charlotte was extremely surprised. “Everybody else got celebrities!” she pointed out.

“Yeah, but I’m much more curious about this,” Piper said, waving her finger between Charlotte and the guys..

Charlotte reached for her wine tumbler and took a sip. Wow. Ugh. She hated this game too. “Well, Jasper… I love you and all, and it’s been real, but…”

“Kill ME???” Jasper completed the thought. “Why???”

“Well… because my brain just can’t fathom any scenario in which either of the other options could happen,” She shrugged her shoulders and took another drink.

He sank in the couch and Piper reminded him, “Henry will marry you.“

Henry scoffed, "I’m marrying Daisy Riddle.”

“RIDLEY!” Charlotte and Piper both snapped. Then, Piper sighed and looked back to Charlotte.

“With enough wine, I guess Henry gets laid..” she took another sip of wine and Max tried not to smile as big as he wanted to.

Henry on the other hand jumped up, “Do you realize that means you’d choose to marry MAX?"

"I’m glad you said it so I don’t have to,” Charlotte said and stared into her wine glass.

“I’d like to hear you say it,” Max said and smiled at her. She fought a smile of her own and avoided his gaze. They hadn’t been together long enough to even have a conversation about this, so it was SUPER awkward. They hadn’t even… gone very far intimately or officially told their friends about them. As far as everyone was concerned, they were still playing the “will they, won’t they” game. And now Piper’s little messy ass brings this mess in front of everyone, including Max.

“Why do I have to die, but Max gets married?” Jasper asked, breaking into her stressful thoughts.

“Yep,” Charlotte said, relieved for the interruption of her overthinking.

“What?” Jasper asked the sky.

“Huh?” Charlotte asked him.

“Why? You barely know him and what we do know is that he was a teenage villain and I know we can’t prove it, but I’m reasonably sure he stranded me and Henry on that boat!”

“I was at a party all night with Charlotte,” Max said. She nodded her head, making eye contact with him for the first time since her answer, but she quickly looked away.  He squeezed her knee, then turned his attention back to Jasper. “And I can’t believe that the “why” isn’t obvious.” He began to count his qualities on his fingers for Jasp, “I’m a genius. I have great hair. Muscles. Superpowers. A jet. I can fight, dance, award winning skills in a variety of areas, I’m beautiful and handsome, at the same time…”

“You rock a pair of gray sweatpants like nobody else in the world,” Jasper added, seeing Max’s points.

“Like… everyone here should want to marry me,” Max finished off.

"He’s not humble, but he’s correct,” Charlotte said.

“Thank you for admitting that my hair and muscles have value,” he teased her.

“Wait…” When she  looked up; he winked at her and she felt her face warm from a combination of realizing that the person that was just described was… hers (and wine). This was an even more impressive catch than her ex! She smiled at him.

“You’re equally as intelligent as me and I’d be honored to be your hypothetical husband. Imagine our hypothetical offspring!” Max cheered in excitement. He… really could see himself with Charlotte for the long haul and talking about it, even hypothetically… made it more realistic for him.

And she played along, too. “They would have to be intelligent. That’s just genetics. Obviously, they’d be gorgeous. We both have stunning features, good health, perfect teeth, amazing hair…” he just nodded to everything that she said. “Wow. I really chose well. Imagine if I had answered out of loyalty!” They both laughed.

“Jasper’s rocks for brains babies. Henry’s pick any feature and I’ll pick it apart…” Henry and Jasper grimaced at Max’s insults.

“You’re so rude,” she giggled.

“You love it,” he said and winked.

She nodded. “Can’t deny that.“

“Come here for a sec,” he said and pulled her into his lap. She laughed and he kissed her on the neck, “I would have collapsed this entire house if you said anything else.”

“That doesn’t give me confidence in my choice! You’d better not give our hypothetical kids a temper!”

“Temper? I’M not the one with the temper to give them.” He kissed her neck again and she just reveled in it. They hadn’t been this openly affectionate, but she was feeling good and he had the best neck kisses.

“Are you two still talking hypothetical kids?” Henry asked.

“Are you saying that I’M the one with the temper?” Charlotte asked in a low voice, not paying attention to Henry’s question or Piper taking a sneak pic of them.

“You’re the more aggressive of the two of us,” he said.

Jasper let out an extremely loud sigh of relief. “OKAY! So, I had to die because you two are actually officially doing the thing. Okay. I feel better.”

Henry frowned. He didn’t feel better. He knew that there was something between the two of them, but he guessed that he didn’t think it would get to this level… The seeing his second boss kissing his best friend’s neck… He… didn’t care for that. Max squeezed Charlotte and rested on her shoulder. They were having their own little conversation while Piper was posting their photo and asking how many people knew that they were official.

“This bitch is so messy,” Henry heard Charlotte whisper (about his sister, which he didn’t appreciate, but he knew that he was probably more irritated with Charlotte for being with Max).

Was that why he was mentoring him? TO please his girlfriend? He really… didn’t see anything special in Henry, Henry began to convince himself. Did he even mean the encouraging shit he’d said to him during training, or was he just being nice to score p***y points?  Henry got up and asked, “Jasp, Piper, want anything?” Charlotte noted that he didn’t ask her and Max, but she didn’t want to make a big deal out of it. She could talk to him later about it. She was enjoying this… openness.

[neshabeingchildish]

Upgraded

Share-a-Lair 10 

Charlotte was extremely excited about Henry’s advancement results. He was now featured on Hero Tracks, and she was THE FIRST person to follow him! Hero Tracks was one of her favorite forms of social media. Hero Tracks (while mentioned before, hasn’t been explained, so… let’s).

Hero Tracks served as a progress and news tracker for your favorite heroes. General updates were for the public, but if you follow a hero, you get more updates and if you’re on the friends list, you get to see their own posts, read DETAILS that they would trust friends with. Charlotte generally followed and friended every hero that she met. Henry wasn’t previously on Hero Tracks, because he thought that sidekicks with tracks were lame. “Their hero has a page that has AND and features them. Getting a separate account is try hard,” he told her. So, whenever the Hero League reported his results to him, (which also gets sent to Charlotte, simultaneously), she posted his account from the Tower, followed the account, and congratulated him. Shortly afterwards, Max sent a friend request, which she accepted on Henry’s behalf, and Max also congratulated Henry, “Good  going! Hope this means you’ll move out soon!” She laughed and shook her head. She actually wanted the two of them to possibly work together at some point… and she wished that maybe they could train together. She nonchalantly dropped these desires to both of them at different times, subtly. Max definitely took it in. Henry shot her down.

But. A few days later, Henry received a message from the Hero League.

“I can’t believe my life,” Henry said, disappointed.

Charlotte glanced over and wondered, “What’s happened?” He shoved his phone to her and she read, then cheered, “Max is gonna be your Hero League appointed mentor and trainer?!? Lucky you!” She gave him the phone back with a huge smile. “I’m so proud of this.”

“You had something to do with this, didn’t you?”

“I told Max the same things that I told you and I guess he cared, because that message says that he personally requested this… and Henry… That is remarkable. He’s got global hero status. Henry… This could rocket your hero career.”

He sighed. He knew these things. He still didn’t like it. This meant that he sort of would have to report to Max… and… he still worked for Captain Man. When would he have PEACE, in this arrangement? He groaned and left her workspace to go call Jasper and complain to him about it. HE’D offer some type of empathy for Henry’s plight.

.

Honestly, it wasn’t bad being under Max’s mentorship and training. Henry found that even though he hated being around him casually, Max was pretty professional and patient with teaching him stuff. Sometimes, Henry could see in his expressions that he thought Henry should know more and was silently judging him for it. But, the one time that he brought it up, Max corrected him by saying, “I’m actually judging Captain Man. It’s almost like he never wanted you to take over for him… or maybe Swellview is too small for your talents. That’s also possible. Hiddenville was definitely too small for mine, and you’re under my wings now, so… your possibilities broaden.” Max gave him a sincere smile, then clapped his hands once and said, “Back to acrobatics lessons!” 

Max was… a brilliant fighter! Henry was super impressed with his abilities, agility, and versatility. And, he wouldn’t say it yet, but he was truly grateful for the opportunity to work so closely with him. Also, he was seeing Max a lot differently. Whenever he was satisfied with Henry’s training progress, he said that he would select assignments to bring him on. ASSIGNMENTS. With SuperMax! Henry was not going to fanboy over it… openly. He just wanted to work hard, prove himself, and venture on those opportunities.

.

Piper decided a get together was in order, because since Henry began training with Max, he hadn’t been in Swellview as much. Hero League business took precedence over Swellview business and Max refuted several of Captain Man’s refusals to let Henry off for various reasons. Max’s requests took precedence. Captain Man was definitely pissed, but Piper missed her brother and friends. Charlotte hadn’t felt the same about Piper since she joined the team and started acting like the guys, but she still hung out with her whenever she got a chance, out of nostalgia for the kid that she used to love and Girl Code. Definitely didn’t make it a priority or effort, though.

There they were, all being at least civil and Piper suggested that they play “Sex, Kill Marry” or whatever the heck it was called. Charlotte rolled her eyes and listened to various requests and answers, from names that Piper spouted out.

Jasper thought for a moment, during his turn, “Hmmm… I guess I’d marry Timothy Chalamet, screw Matthew Daddario, and have to kill Dylan Minnette. (Only because I just don’t love him like the other two…)”

Henry complained, “I HATE THIS GAME. UGH. F word China McClain, K word Selena Gomez, marry Daisy Riddle.”

Piper told him, “That’s not even her name!” 

Henry wasn’t to be deterred or have this lengthened. “That’s my answer! This is weird enough to play with my sister involved.”

So, when it was Charlotte’s turn and Piper said, “These three!” And she pointed at the three dudes in then room. 

Max raised an eyebrow and gave her an amused glance. Charlotte was extremely surprised. “Everybody else got celebrities!” she pointed out.

“Yeah, but I’m much more curious about this,” Piper said, waving her finger between Charlotte and the guys.. 

Charlotte reached for her wine tumbler and took a sip. Wow. Ugh. She hated this game too. “Well, Jasper… I love you and all, and it’s been real, but…”

“Kill ME???” Jasper completed the thought. “Why???”

“Well… because my brain just can’t fathom any scenario in which either of the other options could happen,” She shrugged her shoulders and took another drink.

He sank in the couch and Piper reminded him, “Henry will marry you." 

Henry scoffed, "I’m marrying Daisy Riddle.”

“RIDLEY!” Charlotte and Piper both snapped. Then, Piper sighed and looked back to Charlotte. 

“With enough wine, I guess Henry gets laid..” she took another sip of wine and Max tried not to smile as big as he wanted to. 

Henry on the other hand jumped up, “Do you realize that means you’d choose to marry MAX?" 

"I’m glad you said it so I don’t have to,” Charlotte said and stared into her wine glass.

“I’d like to hear you say it,” Max said and smiled at her. She fought a smile of her own and avoided his gaze. They hadn’t been together long enough to even have a conversation about this, so it was SUPER awkward. They hadn’t even… gone very far intimately or officially told their friends about them. As far as everyone was concerned, they were still playing the “will they, won’t they” game. And now Piper’s little messy ass brings this mess in front of everyone, including Max.

“Why do I have to die, but Max gets married?” Jasper asked, breaking into her stressful thoughts.

“Yep,” Charlotte said, relieved for the interruption of her overthinking. 

“What?” Jasper asked the sky.

“Huh?” Charlotte asked him.

“Why? You barely know him and what we do know is that he was a teenage villain and I know we can’t prove it, but I’m reasonably sure he stranded me and Henry on that boat!”

“I was at a party all night with Charlotte,” Max said. She nodded her head, making eye contact with him for the first time since her answer, but she quickly looked away.  He squeezed her knee, then turned his attention back to Jasper. “And I can’t believe that the “why” isn’t obvious.” He began to count his qualities on his fingers for Jasp, “I’m a genius. I have great hair. Muscles. Superpowers. A jet. I can fight, dance, award winning skills in a variety of areas, I’m beautiful and handsome, at the same time…”

“You rock a pair of gray sweatpants like nobody else in the world,” Jasper added, seeing Max’s points.

“Like… everyone here should want to marry me,” Max finished off.

"He’s not humble, but he’s correct,” Charlotte said. 

“Thank you for admitting that my hair and muscles have value,” he teased her.

“Wait…” When she  looked up; he winked at her and she felt her face warm from a combination of realizing that the person that was just described was… hers (and wine). This was an even more impressive catch than her ex! She smiled at him.

“You’re equally as intelligent as me and I’d be honored to be your hypothetical husband. Imagine our hypothetical offspring!” Max cheered in excitement. He… really could see himself with Charlotte for the long haul and talking about it, even hypothetically… made it more realistic for him.

And she played along, too. “They would have to be intelligent. That’s just genetics. Obviously, they’d be gorgeous. We both have stunning features, good health, perfect teeth, amazing hair…" he just nodded to everything that she said. “Wow. I really chose well. Imagine if I had answered out of loyalty!” They both laughed. 

“Jasper’s rocks for brains babies. Henry’s pick any feature and I’ll pick it apart…” Henry and Jasper grimaced at Max’s insults.

“You’re so rude,” she giggled. 

“You love it,” he said and winked. 

She nodded. “Can’t deny that." 

“Come here for a sec,” he said and pulled her into his lap. She laughed and he kissed her on the neck, “I would have collapsed this entire house if you said anything else.”

“That doesn’t give me confidence in my choice! You’d better not give our hypothetical kids a temper!”

“Temper? I’M not the one with the temper to give them.” He kissed her neck again and she just reveled in it. They hadn’t been this openly affectionate, but she was feeling good and he had the best neck kisses.

“Are you two still talking hypothetical kids?” Henry asked.

“Are you saying that I’M the one with the temper?” Charlotte asked in a low voice, not paying attention to Henry’s question or Piper taking a sneak pic of them.

“You’re the more aggressive of the two of us,” he said.

Jasper let out an extremely loud sigh of relief. “OKAY! So, I had to die because you two are actually officially doing the thing. Okay. I feel better.” 

Henry frowned. He didn’t feel better. He knew that there was something between the two of them, but he guessed that he didn’t think it would get to this level… The seeing his second boss kissing his best friend’s neck… He… didn’t care for that. Max squeezed Charlotte and rested on her shoulder. They were having their own little conversation while Piper was posting their photo and asking how many people knew that they were official.

“This bitch is so messy,” Henry heard Charlotte whisper (about his sister, which he didn’t appreciate, but he knew that he was probably more irritated with Charlotte for being with Max). 

Was that why he was mentoring him? TO please his girlfriend? He really… didn’t see anything special in Henry, Henry began to convince himself. Did he even mean the encouraging shit he’d said to him during training, or was he just being nice to score p***y points?  Henry got up and asked, “Jasp, Piper, want anything?” Charlotte noted that he didn’t ask her and Max, but she didn’t want to make a big deal out of it. She could talk to him later about it. She was enjoying this… openness. 

[mrsfoxmulder]

Things I’ve heard in the fandom lately, and my take on them:

“Monique is a slut!” — Why? Because she’s dating someone you don’t want her to date? Or because she isn’t Gillian Anderson? Not sure any of that adds up.

“Monique is an air-head/moron/idiot!” — And this is based on what, all the many conversations you’ve had with her? Or is it based on random assumptions, conjecture, wishful thinking, and circumstantial nonsense?

“Monique is crazy and obsessed with David!” — Um, YOU are the one who is fucking stalking this chick. Seek help.

“Monique is a fat-ass!” — HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA have you not SEEN her body??? I think unless you’re willing to post a picture of your OWN body to compare side-by-side, you might want to settle the fuck down. (Also I just REALLY hate it when “fat” is used as a pejorative at all. Super lame.)

“Monique is ugly!” — Yeah and water is dry. Once again, I want to know what YOU look like if you’re calling HER ugly.

“Monique has the fattest calves I’ve ever seen!” — Is....Is this supposed to be an insult? Why are you paying so much attention to her calves? Who cares what someone’s calves look like? Why are we scrutinizing calves now? (Why are we making body judgments at all?) What does calf-size even prove? Also my calves are at LEAST three times the size of hers so like, feel free to come at me too, you fucking calf-obsessed weirdos.

“Monique is an Asian whore!” — What the fuck. We’re really doing this? How the actual fuck does race play a factor in this??? Are you wearing a MAGA hat that is cutting off circulation to your brain?

“Monique is a child!” — Translation: She is younger than me and I am super bitter about it. She has SOME NERVE not to be as old as me!

“Monique is just after David’s money!” — So you claim to be a fan of David’s and adore him (or did before she came along), were YOU only a fan of his because he had money? You didn’t admire him for ANY other reason? Including when YOU were in your 20′s? You must not think very highly of David AT ALL if you don’t think he has anything else to offer a woman beyond his bank account. If YOU were younger and single, and a handsome, sexy, famous, and intelligent older man whom you already greatly admired (and were attracted to) wanted to spend lots of time with you and share amazing experiences with you like traveling the world, would YOU turn that down? Because I sure as fuck wouldn’t. Honestly Monique is out there living her best life and y’all just mad because you aren’t.

“Monique is immature!” — Again, YOU are the one calling her names, spreading ludicrous rumors about her, and just generally behaving like a middle school “mean girl” simply because she’s dating a celebrity you like or is “ruining your OTP ship”.

“Monique is too shallow/stupid/young/ugly for David! — David is a GROWN-ASS MAN and I think he gets to be the one to decide these things. Not some anonymous obsessed Gillovny-shipping fangirl on the internet who has no connection to him or his personal life whatsoever.

“Monique is [insert any other random insult]!” — YOU NEED TO GET A FUCKING LIFE OF YOUR OWN, you weird psycho internet stalker. Why do you care about this so much??? Like seriously, what difference does it make to your life/existence AT ALL for David to be dating this girl or anyone else for that matter? If you can’t say anything nice, and are determined to shit on the people who DO say nice things and who just come here for fun, then step away from your computer/smart phone, go outside, and live your own life instead of obsessing over someone else’s. There’s a great big wide world out there and you are choosing to spend your time spreading hate and getting yourself worked up over something that shouldn’t even matter to you.

Life is too short to spend it full of bitterness, hate, and resentment. There is already enough of that in the world. Do something productive. Put something GOOD into the world. That’s what I come on social media to do: to spread POSITIVE energy, and to just be silly and fangirl over some of my favorite celebrities every few days. I don’t come on it to see people be so vitriolic to each other. It is driving some really great people away from a community they once enjoyed. Social media is supposed to be for fun. And guess what: YOU CAN SPREAD POSITIVITY AND STILL HAVE FUN.

Or don’t. Continue to be salty and lame and kind of sad. I really don’t care. But you won’t live as long. And you won’t be as happy.

And Karma keeps receipts.

[redfoxwritesstuff]

Clover and Lace- Chapter 2

Welcome to chapter two! Chapter one can be found by doing a quick search for “Kit’s Masterlist”. Want in on the tag list? Let me know. As always, we’ve got a big thanks to @winterisakiller who has been a major source of support for this series from well Chapter two on. 

Chapter warnings: Some mutilated bread. 

Chapter two:

“So, figure out where you are going to take the mystery girl on Friday?” Tony asked as he leaned against the wall of the jet. Steve was happy to ignore him until Tony asked three more times.

“No.” He finally admitted. “I don’t want to drive two hours to get to her, drive another two to bring her into the city and spend two more hours driving her home.”

“Get a room? Take her back to your place?” To Tony it seemed simple, a good reason to have her stay the night.

“As if. He’s going to wait 70 years before he makes it that far.” Clint joked from where he sat.

“Not going to wait that long.” Steve protested. “Just not on the first date. Or the second.”

“Or the third.” Bucky added, earning a glare from Steve.

“Or the fourth.” Natasha added from the cockpit and Steve threw his hands in the air.

“Any other ideas from the bleachers?” Steve fishes, wanting to change the topic and maybe even manage to get some real help.

“What is there to do in Arkon anyway?” Bucky asks.

“I’ve never heard of the place but online it says the cafe is good.” Clint offered as he looked up the town on his phone. “Tiny town.”

“Been to the cafe already.” Steve sighed. “And nothing. There is nothing in Arkon. No where for a proper date.”

“Italian restaurant?” Sam offered.

“You can’t go wrong with Italian.” Tony nodded.

“There isn’t even a pizza place.” Steve actually sounded bitter and Clint gasped in what could be actual horror.

“Why would anyone live there?” Clint clutched his chest and dramatically fell back.

“Weather is pretty nice in the area this time of year.” Natasha commented from where she sat. “Pack a picnic and bring some music. Find a nice spot- eat, drink some wine and maybe twirl her around.”

“That’s the lamest thing I’ve ever heard.” Sam laughed at the idea.

“No, that’s actually perfectly lame.” Tony defended. “It’s him. I mean, if she somehow doesn’t know he’s Cap than he’s got to sell her on the whole being a century old thing somehow. An old fashioned date like that could do it.”

“Is that really such an old fashioned idea?” Bucky questioned as Steve looked at his hands. The idea crossed his mind but it hadn’t felt like it would be nearly enough to win a girl as pretty as her.

“It’s classic.” Tony corrected. “Cap is classic. She’s a small town girl. It fits.”

Steve didn’t even look up as the front door opened and two bodies came in laughing. He skipped his morning work out and took the day off the office. No missions were scheduled and for once, he didn’t feel like going into the compound to search up something to do. Two peaceful weekends in a row seemed like a good idea.

“What the hell did the bread do to piss you off?” Bucky was honestly offended at the state of the bread.

Steve got an old fashioned loaf of rye, unsliced because how hard could it be to slice bread? Turns out, when you don’t have the proper knife, it could be very hard. Steve had decided that when he was on his way home that night it was time they buy a proper set of knives of the apartment. They couldn’t keep using their tactical knives for everything.

“Did you cut it with a chainsaw?” Natasha picked up some slices too mutilated to be used in the sandwiches he was making.

“No.” He sighed.

“Just an army knife?” She challenged, eyeing the knife on the counter. “you do know those are for killing, not cooking- right?”

“I washed it first.” Even Steve knew it sounded shitty when said aloud. “I’m getting a knife set this weekend, alright?”

“Why is there mustard on the outside?” Bucky asked as he sat at the kitchen island.

“I got some on my hand. Will you two just buzz off?” Steve was trying, right? His friends were not making him feel any better about this mess of a plan at all.

“Okay, okay. But Steve, really? This-” Bucky waved his hand at the sandwiches, sad and patchy on the counter. “isn’t going to work.”

“What the hell should I do then?!” Steve slammed his hands down on the counter in an unexpected show of frustration.

“Nat?” Bucky turned to her as she was already slipping her coat back on.

“I’m on it. Those were intended to be pastrami on rye, yes?”

Bucky picked up a lump that was intended to be a sandwich and took a large bite before reporting, “Yep.”

With Natasha on mission ‘sandwich’ that freed Bucky up to first finish inhaling the sandwich that at least managed to taste mostly right and set about making potato salad.

“You can’t just take sandwiches, Steve.” He lectured.

“Why not?” Bucky didn’t answer, rather he grabbed his phone and sent off a text, probably to Natasha to request her pick up something more for the date.

Steve was on mission Pie and all things considered, he thought it came together pretty well. The top crust went on pretty enough and when Natasha returned with sandwiches, bottles of water and chips it was time to pull it from the oven.

It was also getting far too close to time to leave. Steve sent up a silent prayer and opened the oven.

“No.”

“What?” Bucky sounded concerned.

“No, no. No. No. No.” The most helpful answer he could provide as he pulled the pie out of the oven and set it on the stove top. A large portion of the top crust had broken somehow and was sank a good ways down into the bubbly cherry goo.

“Well, that’s pretty.” Natasha commented over his shoulder earning a glare.

When the food was finally packed, Steve was sent down the stairs to the far too fancy car Tony was insisting he take. Opening the trunk he found a wicker basket that looked much nicer than the grocery bags he was using to hall things in.

Unloading the bags into the basket and in the process finding a very expensive bottle of wine and much better plates and glasses than Steve had packed, he couldn’t help but be thankful for his friends. Yeah, the meddled and involved themselves in his business. Yeah they pushed and had loud opinions but each and every one of them was rooting for him.

Rosemary puttered about her apartment that whole Friday. Outfits were tried on, discarded and the process repeated until she finally went into the shower where she proceeded to take as long as she could. Everything that could and should be shaved on a proper lady was. She scrubbed, lotioned and polished her skin into silky softness as soft orchestral music played in the background. A few notes played from her office informing her of a fresh notification and she ignored it for now. It could wait.

    It had been a long time since she had a date. It was risky to get attached to people and her brother was less than pleased when she had called him to gush over the attractive man she had met. Rather than be pleased for her he made sure she was reminded of the dangers, the risks and of who she was.

If she kept to herself for much longer, people would start to ask questions anyway, she rationalized. At first she hadn’t wanted to tell him at all but safety won out. He had to know if she wasn’t going to be home. Have a tracker on you, he said as if she didn’t already keep the little specialized earring back on her favorite pair of earrings.

It didn’t really matter, did it? It was just a date. Her brother asked for the man’s name but she refused to provide it. If she wanted to know more about him, more then he was willing to tell her, she had her ways and would be far better at pulling the information then he ever would be. Information was her specialty, after all.

All Julian would find was if he had any public records, arrests or been in the news. Social media accounts he could normally find as well. No, Julian wouldn’t be able to find anything material about the guy. Rosemary could know everything there was to know about him, if she wished.

Rosemary wanted the handsome man with kind blue eyes to be a mystery to her. There were far too few mysteries in her life. Mr. Steve Rogers with his vaguely familiar name would be allowed to continue to be one, right alongside how long she got to stay in this tiny town and if she would ever be called to her dear brother’s side again. It was always better for them to be apart. Really this was the closest they had been to each other in many years, just a few hours drive away. But she did not have a car. It was better that way.

Being alone was hard and she was always alone. There was a knock on her door, drawing her out of her thoughts. Absently, her hand fell away from the necklace she had been fingering. That’s right, this time she wasn’t always alone. Mrs. Jones was always around and checking up on her.

“Sara?” The hearty voice of Mrs. Jones called through the door and she winced at the name. She had always hated the name Sara. More than likely that was why her brother picked it for her this time. Such a childish action, to saddle her with a name she hated even if it was only to be for a few months or a few years. He was still childish. She stuck her tongue out at the thought as if somehow she could stick her tongue out at him.

“Come in.” She called through the door, knowing with the thin walls the old woman would hear just fine.

    “Don’t you just look sweet.” She cooed as she shuffled into the room. “Spin for me, Honey?”

“You think so?” Sara did a little spin to humor the woman. The skirt of her dress flaring out and her hair dancing around her shoulders.

“When does he get here?” Mrs. Jones sat at the small dining table.

“Should be here in another 30 minutes.” Sara shrugged, taking a seat across from the old woman.

“It is so good to see you stepping out with such a fine man. Or any man at all for that matter.” Mrs. Jones didn’t waste any time getting to the point not that Sara hadn’t expected it. Mrs. Jones had tried to set her up with nearly every single man within ten years of her age within 100 miles of her home.

“It’s just a date, Mrs. Jones. Nothing serious may come from it.” Nothing serious would come from it. It wouldn’t do to get attached. It would however be nice to have some company. To have a handsome man call her pretty and maybe kiss her. She was after all nearly 26 and hadn’t had a proper kiss.

Knocking on the door drew them out of their conversation before it could really start. Sara was thankful for that in all honesty. It was a conversation that could call into question her past.

“He’s early?”

“Go, on! Answer the door.” Mrs. Jones ordered as if Sara wasn’t already rising to her feet. “I’ll just busy myself on the balcony. I’ll lock up on my way out. Don’t mind a little old lady. Oh and remember, if he says late- wrap it up Honey. I’ll just put the condoms I brought you on your nightstand, just in case.”

Sara rolled her eyes as she took a deep breath and peeked through the peephole in the door. She tried to calm the blush already burning bright on her face thanks to that old woman. Condoms, really? Sara had been thinking of maybe a kiss. Hell, she’d never even purchased condoms before. With another deep breath she focused on trying to make out who was outside her door.

Safety was always a concern for her but she could just make out Steve’s face too close to the door as he shifted from foot to foot. It was cute to see a sign of nerves from someone so handsome when he didn’t know she was looking. With one last deep breath, she opened the door.

    “Sara. Sorry, I know I’m early.” Steve scratched the back of his neck and glanced down before pushing the flowers in his hand toward her somewhat forcefully. “I ah- I got these for you. I hope-”

    “They’re perfect. Thank you, Steve. Please come in.” Sara took the flowers from him and opened the door wide enough for him to come inside before shutting it behind him.

    With a deep breath she took in the scent of the flowers. Daisies, carnations and lilies mixed together for a warm and colorful arrangement that seemed to embody the summer season. She couldn't help but smile warmly as she placed them in a vase that normally sat empty on her small dining room table.

    “I should have called…” Steve ran his hands down his thighs, clearly a ball of nerves and Sara couldn’t stop the laugh that bubbled from her throat as she turned to him.

“She wasn’t doing anything anyway.” Mrs. Jones called from where she sipped coffee she at some point helped herself to perched on the balcony chair. Somehow the woman could move fast and silently when needed and it was one of the world’s greatest mysteries as to how she did it.

“It’s fine, Steve. Really, it’s so good to see you again.” Finally, he looked directly at her and smiled. Rosemary could have died happy with the way his smile lit up his face.

“God, you look beautiful.” Steve breathed the words and Rosemary couldn’t stop the blush that rushed to her face as he took the sight of her in.

Standing next to the flowers, he found her to be a vision of classic beauty. Her auburn hair was free flowing in loose waves that seemed to dance as she moved. Again she wore a dress but this one took his breath away. It was a simple classic cut that would have almost been appropriate even in his time but the thin fabric cling to her as she moved.

It was easy enough to tell how thin it was as she moved about he could see the ever so subtle flexing and shifting of muscle hidden under the fabric. Steve wondered if it was as soft as it looked. She paired the forest green dress with simple black heels and a delicate chain around her neck. Simple earrings hung from her ears. A vision of classic beauty.

“Thank you. You’re not half bad tonight yourself Steve.” She hoped her face wasn’t nearly as red as it felt when her words jerked him out of his thoughts. Steve wore a simple white button up shirt that hugged his frame and a pair of dark wash jeans that clung to his thighs. Just a bit dressed up from their first meeting but perfectly delectable on his own.

“So, where are we off to?” Rosemary smiled at Steve as they made their way down the stairs that would spit them out into the cafe. Mrs. Jones would lock up at the end of the night but she had a key and codes to get in at all hours and the trust to use them.

“It’s a surprise.” Steve fidgeted and dearly hoped that listening to the team wasn’t going to bite him in the ass.

“Fancy car.” Rosemary whistled as they stepped outside earning a laugh from Steve. “What do you do?”

“Oh just some security work.” Steve smiled and hated how he didn’t want to tell her right then what it was he did.

If she didn’t know he would get to know her as just Steve for a bit longer yet. If he told her now he worried that she’d think he was just using it to get her to sleep with him at the end of the date or at least that was the excuse he gave himself.

“Must be some security work if you’re driving this.” Rosemary laughed and cringed internally, hating how materialistic she sounded. The car was nice, yes. It was also very expensive. She knew this because Julian drives a similar car.

“I ah-” Steve laughed awkwardly and tried speaking again as he opened the door for her. “It’s actually my boss’ car. He insisted that it wasn’t proper to take a lady out on a Harley.”

“Oh.” The door shut and Steve rushed around to the driver’s side. “Well, I wouldn’t have minded a ride on the Harley.”

“Yeah?” Steve glanced her way and she hated how she blushed seemingly instantly.

“I’ve never been on one before.” She shrugged and watched as the small town passed by her window.

“I’ll be sure to bring it by next time.” Next time?

Could she let there be a next time? This was risky enough. If they got along well and there was a next time leaving would hurt more.

“I’d like that.”

He took them into the hills just outside of town. The sun was bright and warm. It was a perfect summer day. Leaving town however was something she didn’t expect. It was also something she knew Julian would frown at. She’d probably have to hear about it later.

Rosemary decided she regardless of what pain was going to come- and this was surely going to result in pain- it was worth feeling a bit more normal. When Julian asked why she was indulging she would just tell him it was for her cover. People were starting to ask questions, she could say. Leaving so soon would just raise more questions.

It occurred to her that for the first time in her life, she was considering lying to the only person she’s always had. Glancing over at Steve, his bright blue eyes on the road and sun playing off the blonde highlights she had wondered about the weekend prior. She hoped he was worth it.

Tag lsit: @bambamwolf87, @dangertoozmanykids101, @sweetbeary713, @0-0-0-0-0-0-0-7, @theoneanna, @alexakeyloveloki, @j-u-s-t-4, @missaphrodite23, @princess76179, @fairlightswiftly

[spooky-skz]

Fanboy!Hyunjin AU

HELLO GUYS! It’s 2 something in the morning where I live and I’m itching to post an au for hyunjin aside from the au’s I have in progress ( the nephilim!au and youtuber!au are coming soon i promise.) SO WHAT BETTER TO DO THAN AN IDOL AU

•so you’re a very popular member from a girl group called, A+. (ik, it’s lame, bare with me its 2 am)

•your music can be heard blaring out from many shops, restaurants, cafe’s, etc.

• and the group has received nothing but praise for the hard work you all put in during your trainee days to the present.

•NOW LETS GET TO FANBOY!HYUNJIN.

•skz are all stans of your group but each boy has a different bias.

• hyunjin is a very proud stan. he has you as his lock & home screen. it’s a photo your company first released of you when they were announcing the members of the group.

•he picked you to stan bc of your cool personality and amazing talents! you weren’t just a pretty face uwu

•collects every album/photo card of yours no matter how many versions your company releases.

• a cashier asked him once why he had ten copies of the same album and his reply was simple. each album has the possibility of having a signed photocard.

•he held his breath every time he opened an album, however he found a different member’s signed photocard.

•not gonna lie, he was kind of bummed but nevertheless still happy that he got the rare chance to own such a precious product.

•texted in the skz group chat who he got.

• then his phone started ringing and it was jeongin.

•he had to move the phone away from his ear bc the kid was screaming his dolphin scream from the other line.

•”YOU GOT HEYOON’S PHOTOCARD?!” the younger boy asked, panting from his battle cry.

• hyunjin responded with a yes.

•”I’LL TRADE YOU, I GOT (Y/N)!” jeongin shouted.

• cue both of them screaming at the same time after they agreed to trade

• this guy jams to A+’s songs while doing anything.

•going grocery shopping? he’s listening to it w/earbuds.

•eating dinner at a restaurant by himself? still listening.

•driving to pick up his dog from the groomers? the people outside his car can hear the song and see him TURNING UPPPPP to every bop y’all had ever released.

•he knows every line you have by heart. can recite it backwards too, true talent.

• first to open a fansite for you and it became a vERY big thing for your fandom????

•this guy, he’s like the ideal fansite everyone wishes to exist.

•he doesn’t white wash photos because he firmly believes that you are beautiful just as yourself, no lightening of skin necessary.

•he lets people edit his photos too but as long as they don’t crop out his infamous cute pencil and paper logo that has a red, “A+” written on it.

•he also runs an instagram that is dedicated to updates for your group.

•everyone is always like… “how tf does he get this info so fast? like your company just posted about the news of your comeback two minutes ago and he’s already got a whole post about it with his own personal concerns and hopes.”

•unbeknownst to the company, your group always keeps up with social media posts. you and the rest of your own members have secret accounts that you use to follow fans who like to give detailed inputs on your recent performances and interviews. all their cute edits and encouragement fill your heart full of love!

•you actually took notice of hyunjin’s account first because he was one of the most popular fan accounts in the fandom. EVERYONE could count on his posts bc he didn’t publish any info till he verified it as true.

•you appreciated how he wrote about the little extra movements you made in your dance choreos that really make the overall concept of your song pop. the tiny habits you hadn’t noticed about yourself were things he wrote about as well. he also wasn’t creepy in his writing too. you could really sense how much this boy adored your music.

•btw he posted one selfie after hitting a milestone of 2 million followers and you might of… choked on your drink for a bit bc wow! this guy is behind all them posts?!

•ooooof don’t get me started on the first fanmeet your company held.

•hyunjin’s palms were sweaty, knees weak, arms are heavy (bahahaha sorry i had to put in a little eminem in there.) because he was literally going to come face to face with the individual who brightened up his life with her jokes, performing abilities, and more!

• the plane touched down and your group was led out into the airport lounge area where he and the numerous fans already waiting there, IT WAS INTENSE.

• security were doing their best to keep everyone calm but most of the fans were shoving and pulling to get a closer look at y’all.

•not hyunjin though. he was just nervously waiting for your group to make a turn in the corner of the large hallway with a small present in his hand.

• the second he saw you round the area where he stood, he didn’t try and take advantage of the fact that the security were only covering one side of the hallway from the crowd, leaving you completely exposed to simply walk in front of him with no one to hold him back if he invaded your personal space. which he totally didn’t :D

• see? The fansite every group deserves lol

•you paused when he called your name because… you’ve seen that face before!!!

•tbh he didn’t expect you to stop bc his words got caught in his throat when your eyes met his and instead his hand held out a small neatly gift wrapped box.

•you accepted the gift with a smile, a thank you, and a bow. your fingers brushed against his wrist for a moment and you both felt static surge through your hands.

•AHHHH THE CUTE FACIAL EXPRESSION YOU HAD ON WHILE YOU APOLOGIZED FOR ELECTROCUTING HIM WAS MAKING HIS FACE TURN REDDER AND REDDER BY THE MOMENT.

•”no worries! we’re both okay and that’s what matters.” he said looking very flustered.

•you were called to by heyoon bc the other members were already in the van just waiting for you.

•while the stylist was adding some finishing touches to your outfit, she asked, “do you have a specific jewelry piece in mind today?” you held up the gift hyunjin had given you and it was a beautiful necklace with a pendant that had the words, “side by side, or miles apart, your fans are always connected with you through the heart,” engraved onto it.

•this guy had the biggest smile on his face when he saw you wearing the gift he thought about for a while.

•”cute necklace!” he heard a member beside you say.

• “thanks, it’s my favorite.” you replied, and now it was his turn to kneel in front of you, his heart beating faster/harder than earlier.

OOF! would you guys like a part 2, ya girl is totally open. it’s like four minutes to four am here now, ahaha took me a while to make this. hope you enjoyed it! if you’re going to kcon la on saturday and sunday, let me know bc i’ll be there!!!!! time to sleeeeeeep. i might edit little errors here and there when i wake up later on lol. sweet dreams, my precious cabbages.

[theextraspoon]

Remember Pewdiepie? The Swedish Youtuber once had a slip of a racial slur cost him his YT Red Series, cost him hundreds of thousands of followers and changed the way we use Youtube and Google. Thanks to the media, we've moved from cancelling people, to getting them fired, and when that doesn't work, we call the papers because we know they're the types to give us that feel good by default narrative that sent my view into the spiral of media puppetry. It baffled me that Youtube would want to throw it's poster boy under the bus like said to the advertisers summit in 2015. Since then Youtube ran ad campaigns for some really sketchy places, like the data-mining of Candid to the exploitation of mental health through Betterhelp yet denied completely legal ads from hemp cultivation. That's where we step in.

Last night I was watching one of my favorite streamers, Hyphonix, when it suddenly became clear that he was one of the owners of the businesses stuck in the cross-hairs of the media wars attempting to contact me and he was upset with me for being upset with him, understandable. However, he didn't dox me and he didn't dox my dad. He just didn't. I've tested it. People tried to convince me he was poison and stealing from me.That he was  a "literal Hitler." He's not though. At least, I've not seen it. 

He's a dick, sure, but most of us are dicks too. I think he's funny. Next to another streamer whom I found humorous outside of gamer gate for his delivery was, Jim "Metokur," whom we've mentioned before here. I like the kid. He didn't dox me. So when I apologized for wrongfully judging him, it was then his chat gave me the name I needed. 

The real person who've been behind digging into my personal information, doxing me, doxing my biological and adoptive family and even stole their identity so they can't be held accountable for their actions. This person, PPP, Pepe, AP, Adonis Paul or whatever name he give himself today, decided to claim a gang affiliation with the hells angels (whom he's never met in real life or even spoken to) in an effort to threaten people into or out of working with select sponsors and other streamers. However, I DO know a few angels and they don't take kindly to this behavior and blamed me directly for it putting me in quite a bit of danger I had worked 2 years to get out of. However when I came to ask Adonis Paul to stop, he began to poorly gaslight me. I tried to tell him I could hear a girl by the name of Riley, roleplaying as my uncle Irish (by the same name even) in GTA. For years, my life story has been Riley's online persona and it began to catch up to me, but I had no idea what the hell was going on or why everyone was claiming I was crazy and gaslighting me with "schizophrenia" which wouldn't be the correct diagnosis anyways. It's been terrifying and cost me a lot of money just to feel safe. You see, Adonis Paul drove me away from sponsoring youtubers and twitch streamers due to the threats, alleged theft, sponsored parties pulling and haven't even made a streamlabs donation since 2019 because someone named "FT WORTH, TX HENDERSON" frauded our card for $400. Since my dad was doxed and my child threatened which, as a victim on protection order with a missing child, no youtube channel or stream herself, no public non-business socials it was a very real perceived threat. I went to police. I NEVER go to police, for obvious reasons. This person terrified me that "he and leaf had kidnapped my son to raise themselves" and not having seen him in a year, I was forced to go to police. Since this began, at least once a day, I've been followed into chats mocked for being raped in jail when wrongfully arrested and laughed at for my kid going missing and then mocked for going to the police for it.

Ironically the same guys were still there playing GTA, which you can only watch really if you want to get in on pixel. They suddenly knew I was there. Obviously. They'd been role playing with the online version of my identity, according to someone else, for YEARS. Before you ask, no, I have no idea who this person is. I know who they are now, but I've never met or spoken to this person and many don't even refer to them as Riley but as Lucy or Lara.

You know what was happening today? Live? 

We had just lost George Floyd, the entire country is in protest and getting looted after being shut down for months from Covid-19. The internet socialites were pulling everyone in all types of ways. From God, to Godzilla, Satan, to political parties. Everyone is hurting everyone and I've been watching it get worse and worse for months. 

The gamers were investigating in game after a year of my crying out to no one hearing me. By now, the Youngsliving organization was doing "movie reviews" in regards to... me? The lion tribe had copied and stolen my website. Aiden of Hemp City literally copied my site word for word. It was an attack. So I stopped and I let them start to get the back up and overwhelming stress that comes with my job and... because I would be at a halt, they get no more free work while they harass me. 

The pixel server was already familiar with who I was because it's where the identity was being used most and how everyone kept hearing my info to report me. The GTA cops were investigating for me. Like legitimately talking to real characters that also appeared in real life, because this was real crime being done... in game. It's the wildest thing I've seen. With the zoo, the review channels, the political channels, I honestly was surprised again, not by identity but to see police in a video game behaving better than the real police outside my home during the riots. They were investigating. Who took her? How did they know her? What's she look like? They speculated as much as I had. This was an insane situation and suddenly I realized all of us were placed into this by someone else like a chain reaction online. Hurt people, hurting people. I was taken back and many people told me they had no idea this was happening or they thought it was all in game. They forgot people were watching.

That's when I heard the chatter over the radio.

You can read chat. We can hear her now. Today's nature's law! It came from Metokur. He said it's Nature's birthday!

I heard a two game cops say and that's when I believed it was kind of over. 

That brings me back to the level guys, on the floor. They could hear me and you know. I was so hurt by these people that I didn't for one second think "why are they doing this to me?" I automatically assumed they did it to cause me harm, so I was hurting others in conversation with the ways I lashed out against it.

Hurt people, hurt people.

Everyone has shat on my favorite streamer. Everyone said things so vile against him, I wouldn't have looked twice at his stream if that came first. He was being hurt... right now. Today, in this moment, he was being hurt by not being given a fair shot at business like I had not gotten a fair shot before. I KNOW that feeling. 

So I've decided to be the one to stop the cycle. I know, I know. I'm such a lame, loser, boomer. Thing is when you act out as a real life identity you effect their life and the lives around them. You take more than sales you take away the persons security, safety in their own home, freedom to exist. You hurt everyone around you and if it's bad enough you'll do it to someone like me who will hunt you down and track you like the best GTA cop pixel. 

This is what happened with Pewdiepie. His fair chance was taken from him while people like Jake and Adonis Paul literally threaten SPONSORS, friends, family, jobs and eventually, the papers until they get what they want and all they want is submission and like Pewdiepie, I'm a stubborn Scandinavian who won't apologize if she doesn't mean it and won't say sorry if I'm not. These types of manipulators don't like that, so they attempt to control the narrative on your name. It should be illegal. Look at what the media does RIGHT NOW. Turn on the news and just listen for a few minutes. Isn't that insane?! The reason I bring up Pewdiepie is that he's in this game I'm somehow dragged into as well. You can catch it with the right bot or knowing what to look for with the out of context statements and the random, repetitive words.  It's those words that trigger the mind (or A.I.)  into the game. Point is, I had it done to me and I was about to turn around and do it AGAIN to Pewdiepie, the very man I quit the ad program for in the first place. The very one they threw under the bus. This woke me up.

I'm not going to say the words or things Pewdiepie says is okay or stand by his thoughts and ideas, that's not why I'm here. I'm here to make fair what was made wrong in the first place. It's the whole reason I went private sponsorship and here I am, angry that he's involved, blaming him and even Markiplier of doxing and threatening me simply because they're using the same words in the same game at the same time unbeknownst to one another. I was online, threatening the Wallstreet Journal to Pewdiepie and that is the most disgusted I've been with myself all year. I was hurt. I was going to hurt someone else because of it. 

So, all of these thoughts in my mind, I've been awaken. I've been humbled. I saw myself in the mirror becoming the very same monster I was hunting and collectively, in a way, the "game" these youtubers were playing actually made me a better person. It woke me up. I honestly feel if Adonis Paul had not doxxed me, my biological father, the man who took me in, my fathers motorcycle enthusiast group whom I finally had gotten away from and was now literally handed back to, threatening me, my youtubers and my son, I think the game would have ended much sooner. I had to come to the end myself though or I wouldn't learn.

No, what happened to me wasn't fair and no, it probably will never be made okay but in time maybe it will. All I know is I will NOT become one of them and I will NOT become the monster I hunted to hurt the people I protect. 

I've decided to let the streamer and his business in. I've decided to stop the cycle. I like the streamer and watched as a fan but right now, men are being censored and taken down, presented as nazis and literal Fuhrers. If I let him him sit and watch his friends and accomplices be accepted and moved out of the city it wouldn't be fair as he would have been first. It wouldn't be fair because as long as his labs are legit and not stolen, he deserves to go up like the rest of us or it will feel like he's singled out, attacked, and he will take it personally. It will hurt, he will hurt others, the cycle continues. 

I believe in checking for thorns in the paw before condemning the beast. I honestly see good in these streamers the media has labeled and thus, cost their jobs and finances. I've watched them struggle, yell out for help, have families in need, and now go through a pandemic with not so much as a squeak from the big dogs at Youtube. I almost missed an important video myself clearing a lot of this up by my dog/pig, or youtube friend in the game that guided me a bit, knowingly or not. That pig knows who he is and I don't want to risk his current position in the game by exposing him. I'm not the media, but thank you for exposing the bootlegging in the gulf of our brand lines as they think we own all 150. If you're reading this, you helped all the way to Pewdiepie. That's an impressive reach we can have, guys. 

So, I hope you all understand my stand on this. The cycle needs to stop. We can't leave people behind. This is a movement for all of us. Whether you believe in freedom or you believe in karma, green or light, our future will be grim if people are left behind. We can't build on cracked foundation. 

Please stop a cycle. 

We'll keep everyone updated as we reopen and upload products for our customers, our sponsored creators, our friends and families and as promised, are looking forward to working with unexpected our new friend and partner soon!

Not everyone is literal Hitler. Some are hurting from the thorns of the past. Pull them out and you tame the beast.

via Natural Healthy: Latest News

[kraussoutene]

The 7 Key Principles of B2B Word of Mouth Marketing

The best way to grow any company is for the customers of that company to do the growing for you. Word of mouth is the most effective (and cost-effective) method of customer acquisition and growth.

In B2B, word of mouth is exceptionally important:

91% of B2B purchases are influenced by word of mouth. Click To Tweet .

Why is word of mouth so vital in B2B companies? The relative expense of most B2B purchases outweighs B2C buys. Thus, there is a greater risk associated with B2B decision making. And when risk is higher, customers seek to avoid mistakes. And a primary way buyers avoid mistakes is by seeking the opinions of current customers, via online and offline word of mouth recommendations and referrals.

But what’s fascinating to me is that we know this to be true, in our gut. OF COURSE, word of mouth is important for B2B. Yet, very few companies have an actual strategy for generating customer conversations.

Word of mouth just may be the most important element of B2B success, but scant attention is actually paid to it. Remarkable!

Last week, I had the pleasure of conducting a half-day workshop on Talk Triggers and B2B word of mouth marketing, in cooperation with our friends at Desantis Breindel, a terrific B2B branding agency located in New York City.

They brought together an interesting collection of B2B marketing leaders from a variety of industries, including health care, law, finance and beyond.

I won’t go through the entire workshop here, as that would be pretty lengthy. (If you’re interested in a workshop of your own, let us know.)  Meanwhile, here are 7 key principles of B2B word of mouth marketing.

1. B2B Word of Mouth Must be Purposeful

Most (nearly all) companies take a puzzling laissez-faire approach to word of mouth. They just assume that customers will take about the business. But will they? And if so, what are they saying?

Given the importance of word of mouth in B2B (see 91% figure above), is it wise to be lax about word of mouth strategy?

Our philosophy at Convince & Convert is that all brands can (and should) do word of mouth on purpose, by figuring out an effective Talk Trigger. A Talk Trigger is a strategic, operational differentiator that compels word of mouth, reliably creating customer chatter on an ongoing basis.

2. Talk Triggers Aren’t Really Marketing

A Talk Trigger is something that you DO differently in your business, not something you SAY different in your business.

A Talk Trigger is not classic marketing. It’s not a price or a promotion. It’s not a contest or a coupon. It’s an operational choice that subsequently produces a marketing advantage by turning customers into volunteer marketers.

Freshbooks, for example, is a B2B accounting software company. Their Talk Trigger is their series of free events called I Make a Living. These events help connect their freelancer customers to the broader community, and to Freshbooks. They create a LOT of conversation.

Kudos to @freshbooks for an outstanding and thought-provoking event on how we make the future (with @monikabielskyte) in Toronto tonight! #imakealiving

— Anne Kavanagh (@anne_kavanagh) October 31, 2018

Absolutely insightful, engaging and thought provoking keynote by @monikabielskyte at @freshbooks #imakealiving . Thank you pic.twitter.com/3Y2sH46y6M

— TorontoDiana (@TorontoDiana) October 30, 2018

3. Same is Lame

Many B2B companies play follow the leader. They analyze and evaluate which companies are flourishing in their category or market, and then try to mimic the best characteristics of that brand. This makes sense, as it reduces risk. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, and so forth.

But the problem with that approach is that it doesn’t create any chatter.

Competency doesn’t create conversations. You’ve never called a friend and told them, “Guess what? I flicked a switch and … a light turned on!”

Competency reduces churn and prevents customer defection. But it doesn’t give customers the urge to tell a story about the business, which is the coin of the word of mouth realm.

If you want customers to reliably tell stories about the company, the firm must do something those customers do NOT expect. The best B2B organizations choose to do just one thing different in the operations of the company, and in making that choice, they end up with a Talk Trigger that powers their word of mouth strategy.

Think about Uberconference. This free conference calling service is essentially the same as any other company in the category. Except for the Talk Trigger, which is hilarious on-hold music, written and performed by their CEO, that creates a TON of chatter about the company, online and offline.

my most listened-to song of 2018: the @uberconference hold song.

— Kelly Burns (@kellyaburns) February 12, 2018

The @uberconference hold song is literally a country song called “On Hold” written solely for the purpose of being on hold. This is the greatest thing ever. #uberconference

— TK (@createdbytk) November 22, 2017

I’m on hold for an @uberconference call and the music is pretty darn entertaining. I gotta know who came up with this idea.

— Todd Budin (@budin_todd) January 17, 2018

4. Consistency is Key in B2B Word of Mouth

In addition to the curse of following the leader, one of the other traps B2B companies fall into is believing that, because competition for attention is fierce, they must do something really BIG to break through.

This is why you see so many brands trying their hand at “surprise and delight” these days. Surprise and delight is where you take one customer, in a particular circumstance, and you treat that customer much differently than the rest. Hotels do this a lot. Some guy checks into the Hyatt and finds a live, panda bear sitting on the bed, with a bamboo tree nearby.

The premise is that this one customer will be so surprised and delighted by this unexpected encounter that he will talk about it in social media. It will then go viral, and eventually jump from Reddit (or some such) to the traditional press, earning the hotel lots of attention along the way.

This might work.

Or, you just end up with an upset customer and panda scat in your hotel.

As I mentioned at this workshop, my team and I are not against surprise and delight as a tactic. But let’s call it what it is: a publicity stunt. It’s NOT a word of mouth strategy, because it’s not reliable or repeatable or scalable.

Surprise and delight and “going viral” are lottery tickets, not strategic plans for B2B word of mouth.

5. The Worst Way to Create a Talk Trigger

The least effective approach to word of mouth strategy is the one that almost everyone attempts:

Getting everyone in the conference room to brainstorm a differentiator that will create customer chatter. 

If it was that easy, the Talk Trigger would already exist. If effective word of mouth strategy was simply a matter of getting some smart folks together with some donuts and riffing until gold appears, EVERY company would have a word of mouth strategy instead of ZERO companies having a word of mouth strategy.

The best way to create a Talk Trigger is the hard way: research, process, customer interviews, trial, and optimization.

We use a six-step process when creating word of mouth strategy for clients. It’s the same process we document in the Talk Triggers book.

The single most important component of that process is the customer interviews. B2B companies simply must talk to their customers (we recommend 15 interviews across three customer segments) to determine what buyers expect today at each step of the customer journey.

Once you know what people expect, you then know what they do NOT expect. And that’s where the Talk Trigger lives: in the land of the unexpected.

6. B2B Word of Mouth is a 50/50 Proposition (at best)

One of my favorite research projects we conducted for the book looked at customer attitudes about word of mouth and company differentiators.

We found that in the best case scenario, 47% of customers might conceivably converse about a Talk Trigger.

These are the Uniqueness Seekers (25% of the population) and the Experience Advisors (22% of the population). These two groups are particularly delighted about something unusual or disproportionately predisposed to recommending things to other people.

The other two customer segments are the Fundamentals Fans and the Skeptics. These two groups are unlikely to become volunteer marketers and tell someone else about a business that does something different. The first group is not at all enchanted by differentiators, and the latter believes that anything different is probably a gimmick or a trick.

What this means is that expectations for word of mouth in B2B must be reasonable and realistic. The most successful program in the world will find approximately half of all customers talking about it. That doesn’t at all diminish the importance of word of mouth, and in fact, accentuates the critical nature of creating chatter among that 47%.

Related post: The 3 Types of Customers That Will Talk About Your Business

7. Measuring B2B Word of Mouth

Like with anything that happens at least partially offline, it can be difficult to attribute specific sales to word of mouth, unless the company has a defined customer referral program. Outside of that, however, here’s how we recommend measuring word of mouth efficacy: with the three question survey.

Ask every customer (or every nth customer, if you must) three questions. Ask these questions once they’ve made the purchase and have definitely experienced whatever the Talk Trigger is for the company. If possible, ask every customer these questions at approximately the same post-trigger exposure interval, to eliminate recency bias.

In many cases, B2B companies will ask these questions by tagging them onto an existing Net Promoter Score survey, or other customer satisfaction gauge.

Question 1: Online or offline, how many people have you told about your experiences with our company?

Here, you’re trying to gauge actual information exchange, and whether this customer is likely to engage in word of mouth, or already has.

Question 2: What did you say?

Here, you’re looking for mention of the Talk Trigger. This would be an unaided mention.

Question 3: Did you talk about any of these things? 

Here, you present a list of company characteristics, each with a checkbox. Seven characteristics should be listed, one of which is the Talk Trigger. You’re looking for mention of the Talk Trigger in a prompted, aided list.

There is a LOT MORE to successful B2B word of mouth than I’ve covered here, but I wanted to give you a good summary of some of the key pieces, drawn from my workshop with Desantis Breindel.

If you have questions, or we can help you, find me in social media or contact us here.

The post The 7 Key Principles of B2B Word of Mouth Marketing appeared first on Convince and Convert: Social Media Consulting and Content Marketing Consulting.

https://ift.tt/2PpXTbe

[mercedessharonwo1]

The 7 Key Principles of B2B Word of Mouth Marketing

The best way to grow any company is for the customers of that company to do the growing for you. Word of mouth is the most effective (and cost-effective) method of customer acquisition and growth.

In B2B, word of mouth is exceptionally important:

91% of B2B purchases are influenced by word of mouth. Click To Tweet .

Why is word of mouth so vital in B2B companies? The relative expense of most B2B purchases outweighs B2C buys. Thus, there is a greater risk associated with B2B decision making. And when risk is higher, customers seek to avoid mistakes. And a primary way buyers avoid mistakes is by seeking the opinions of current customers, via online and offline word of mouth recommendations and referrals.

But what’s fascinating to me is that we know this to be true, in our gut. OF COURSE, word of mouth is important for B2B. Yet, very few companies have an actual strategy for generating customer conversations.

Word of mouth just may be the most important element of B2B success, but scant attention is actually paid to it. Remarkable!

Last week, I had the pleasure of conducting a half-day workshop on Talk Triggers and B2B word of mouth marketing, in cooperation with our friends at Desantis Breindel, a terrific B2B branding agency located in New York City.

They brought together an interesting collection of B2B marketing leaders from a variety of industries, including health care, law, finance and beyond.

I won’t go through the entire workshop here, as that would be pretty lengthy. (If you’re interested in a workshop of your own, let us know.)  Meanwhile, here are 7 key principles of B2B word of mouth marketing.

1. B2B Word of Mouth Must be Purposeful

Most (nearly all) companies take a puzzling laissez-faire approach to word of mouth. They just assume that customers will take about the business. But will they? And if so, what are they saying?

Given the importance of word of mouth in B2B (see 91% figure above), is it wise to be lax about word of mouth strategy?

Our philosophy at Convince & Convert is that all brands can (and should) do word of mouth on purpose, by figuring out an effective Talk Trigger. A Talk Trigger is a strategic, operational differentiator that compels word of mouth, reliably creating customer chatter on an ongoing basis.

2. Talk Triggers Aren’t Really Marketing

A Talk Trigger is something that you DO differently in your business, not something you SAY different in your business.

A Talk Trigger is not classic marketing. It’s not a price or a promotion. It’s not a contest or a coupon. It’s an operational choice that subsequently produces a marketing advantage by turning customers into volunteer marketers.

Freshbooks, for example, is a B2B accounting software company. Their Talk Trigger is their series of free events called I Make a Living. These events help connect their freelancer customers to the broader community, and to Freshbooks. They create a LOT of conversation.

Kudos to @freshbooks for an outstanding and thought-provoking event on how we make the future (with @monikabielskyte) in Toronto tonight! #imakealiving

— Anne Kavanagh (@anne_kavanagh) October 31, 2018

Absolutely insightful, engaging and thought provoking keynote by @monikabielskyte at @freshbooks #imakealiving . Thank you pic.twitter.com/3Y2sH46y6M

— TorontoDiana (@TorontoDiana) October 30, 2018

3. Same is Lame

Many B2B companies play follow the leader. They analyze and evaluate which companies are flourishing in their category or market, and then try to mimic the best characteristics of that brand. This makes sense, as it reduces risk. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, and so forth.

But the problem with that approach is that it doesn’t create any chatter.

Competency doesn’t create conversations. You’ve never called a friend and told them, “Guess what? I flicked a switch and … a light turned on!”

Competency reduces churn and prevents customer defection. But it doesn’t give customers the urge to tell a story about the business, which is the coin of the word of mouth realm.

If you want customers to reliably tell stories about the company, the firm must do something those customers do NOT expect. The best B2B organizations choose to do just one thing different in the operations of the company, and in making that choice, they end up with a Talk Trigger that powers their word of mouth strategy.

Think about Uberconference. This free conference calling service is essentially the same as any other company in the category. Except for the Talk Trigger, which is hilarious on-hold music, written and performed by their CEO, that creates a TON of chatter about the company, online and offline.

my most listened-to song of 2018: the @uberconference hold song.

— Kelly Burns (@kellyaburns) February 12, 2018

The @uberconference hold song is literally a country song called “On Hold” written solely for the purpose of being on hold. This is the greatest thing ever. #uberconference

— TK (@createdbytk) November 22, 2017

I’m on hold for an @uberconference call and the music is pretty darn entertaining. I gotta know who came up with this idea.

— Todd Budin (@budin_todd) January 17, 2018

4. Consistency is Key in B2B Word of Mouth

In addition to the curse of following the leader, one of the other traps B2B companies fall into is believing that, because competition for attention is fierce, they must do something really BIG to break through.

This is why you see so many brands trying their hand at “surprise and delight” these days. Surprise and delight is where you take one customer, in a particular circumstance, and you treat that customer much differently than the rest. Hotels do this a lot. Some guy checks into the Hyatt and finds a live, panda bear sitting on the bed, with a bamboo tree nearby.

The premise is that this one customer will be so surprised and delighted by this unexpected encounter that he will talk about it in social media. It will then go viral, and eventually jump from Reddit (or some such) to the traditional press, earning the hotel lots of attention along the way.

This might work.

Or, you just end up with an upset customer and panda scat in your hotel.

As I mentioned at this workshop, my team and I are not against surprise and delight as a tactic. But let’s call it what it is: a publicity stunt. It’s NOT a word of mouth strategy, because it’s not reliable or repeatable or scalable.

Surprise and delight and “going viral” are lottery tickets, not strategic plans for B2B word of mouth.

5. The Worst Way to Create a Talk Trigger

The least effective approach to word of mouth strategy is the one that almost everyone attempts:

Getting everyone in the conference room to brainstorm a differentiator that will create customer chatter. 

If it was that easy, the Talk Trigger would already exist. If effective word of mouth strategy was simply a matter of getting some smart folks together with some donuts and riffing until gold appears, EVERY company would have a word of mouth strategy instead of ZERO companies having a word of mouth strategy.

The best way to create a Talk Trigger is the hard way: research, process, customer interviews, trial, and optimization.

We use a six-step process when creating word of mouth strategy for clients. It’s the same process we document in the Talk Triggers book.

The single most important component of that process is the customer interviews. B2B companies simply must talk to their customers (we recommend 15 interviews across three customer segments) to determine what buyers expect today at each step of the customer journey.

Once you know what people expect, you then know what they do NOT expect. And that’s where the Talk Trigger lives: in the land of the unexpected.

6. B2B Word of Mouth is a 50/50 Proposition (at best)

One of my favorite research projects we conducted for the book looked at customer attitudes about word of mouth and company differentiators.

We found that in the best case scenario, 47% of customers might conceivably converse about a Talk Trigger.

These are the Uniqueness Seekers (25% of the population) and the Experience Advisors (22% of the population). These two groups are particularly delighted about something unusual or disproportionately predisposed to recommending things to other people.

The other two customer segments are the Fundamentals Fans and the Skeptics. These two groups are unlikely to become volunteer marketers and tell someone else about a business that does something different. The first group is not at all enchanted by differentiators, and the latter believes that anything different is probably a gimmick or a trick.

What this means is that expectations for word of mouth in B2B must be reasonable and realistic. The most successful program in the world will find approximately half of all customers talking about it. That doesn’t at all diminish the importance of word of mouth, and in fact, accentuates the critical nature of creating chatter among that 47%.

Related post: The 3 Types of Customers That Will Talk About Your Business

7. Measuring B2B Word of Mouth

Like with anything that happens at least partially offline, it can be difficult to attribute specific sales to word of mouth, unless the company has a defined customer referral program. Outside of that, however, here’s how we recommend measuring word of mouth efficacy: with the three question survey.

Ask every customer (or every nth customer, if you must) three questions. Ask these questions once they’ve made the purchase and have definitely experienced whatever the Talk Trigger is for the company. If possible, ask every customer these questions at approximately the same post-trigger exposure interval, to eliminate recency bias.

In many cases, B2B companies will ask these questions by tagging them onto an existing Net Promoter Score survey, or other customer satisfaction gauge.

Question 1: Online or offline, how many people have you told about your experiences with our company?

Here, you’re trying to gauge actual information exchange, and whether this customer is likely to engage in word of mouth, or already has.

Question 2: What did you say?

Here, you’re looking for mention of the Talk Trigger. This would be an unaided mention.

Question 3: Did you talk about any of these things? 

Here, you present a list of company characteristics, each with a checkbox. Seven characteristics should be listed, one of which is the Talk Trigger. You’re looking for mention of the Talk Trigger in a prompted, aided list.

There is a LOT MORE to successful B2B word of mouth than I’ve covered here, but I wanted to give you a good summary of some of the key pieces, drawn from my workshop with Desantis Breindel.

If you have questions, or we can help you, find me in social media or contact us here.

The post The 7 Key Principles of B2B Word of Mouth Marketing appeared first on Convince and Convert: Social Media Consulting and Content Marketing Consulting.

https://ift.tt/2PpXTbe

[rodneyevesuarywk]

The 7 Key Principles of B2B Word of Mouth Marketing

The best way to grow any company is for the customers of that company to do the growing for you. Word of mouth is the most effective (and cost-effective) method of customer acquisition and growth.

In B2B, word of mouth is exceptionally important:

91% of B2B purchases are influenced by word of mouth. Click To Tweet .

Why is word of mouth so vital in B2B companies? The relative expense of most B2B purchases outweighs B2C buys. Thus, there is a greater risk associated with B2B decision making. And when risk is higher, customers seek to avoid mistakes. And a primary way buyers avoid mistakes is by seeking the opinions of current customers, via online and offline word of mouth recommendations and referrals.

But what’s fascinating to me is that we know this to be true, in our gut. OF COURSE, word of mouth is important for B2B. Yet, very few companies have an actual strategy for generating customer conversations.

Word of mouth just may be the most important element of B2B success, but scant attention is actually paid to it. Remarkable!

Last week, I had the pleasure of conducting a half-day workshop on Talk Triggers and B2B word of mouth marketing, in cooperation with our friends at Desantis Breindel, a terrific B2B branding agency located in New York City.

They brought together an interesting collection of B2B marketing leaders from a variety of industries, including health care, law, finance and beyond.

I won’t go through the entire workshop here, as that would be pretty lengthy. (If you’re interested in a workshop of your own, let us know.)  Meanwhile, here are 7 key principles of B2B word of mouth marketing.

1. B2B Word of Mouth Must be Purposeful

Most (nearly all) companies take a puzzling laissez-faire approach to word of mouth. They just assume that customers will take about the business. But will they? And if so, what are they saying?

Given the importance of word of mouth in B2B (see 91% figure above), is it wise to be lax about word of mouth strategy?

Our philosophy at Convince & Convert is that all brands can (and should) do word of mouth on purpose, by figuring out an effective Talk Trigger. A Talk Trigger is a strategic, operational differentiator that compels word of mouth, reliably creating customer chatter on an ongoing basis.

2. Talk Triggers Aren’t Really Marketing

A Talk Trigger is something that you DO differently in your business, not something you SAY different in your business.

A Talk Trigger is not classic marketing. It’s not a price or a promotion. It’s not a contest or a coupon. It’s an operational choice that subsequently produces a marketing advantage by turning customers into volunteer marketers.

Freshbooks, for example, is a B2B accounting software company. Their Talk Trigger is their series of free events called I Make a Living. These events help connect their freelancer customers to the broader community, and to Freshbooks. They create a LOT of conversation.

Kudos to @freshbooks for an outstanding and thought-provoking event on how we make the future (with @monikabielskyte) in Toronto tonight! #imakealiving

— Anne Kavanagh (@anne_kavanagh) October 31, 2018

Absolutely insightful, engaging and thought provoking keynote by @monikabielskyte at @freshbooks #imakealiving . Thank you pic.twitter.com/3Y2sH46y6M

— TorontoDiana (@TorontoDiana) October 30, 2018

3. Same is Lame

Many B2B companies play follow the leader. They analyze and evaluate which companies are flourishing in their category or market, and then try to mimic the best characteristics of that brand. This makes sense, as it reduces risk. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, and so forth.

But the problem with that approach is that it doesn’t create any chatter.

Competency doesn’t create conversations. You’ve never called a friend and told them, “Guess what? I flicked a switch and … a light turned on!”

Competency reduces churn and prevents customer defection. But it doesn’t give customers the urge to tell a story about the business, which is the coin of the word of mouth realm.

If you want customers to reliably tell stories about the company, the firm must do something those customers do NOT expect. The best B2B organizations choose to do just one thing different in the operations of the company, and in making that choice, they end up with a Talk Trigger that powers their word of mouth strategy.

Think about Uberconference. This free conference calling service is essentially the same as any other company in the category. Except for the Talk Trigger, which is hilarious on-hold music, written and performed by their CEO, that creates a TON of chatter about the company, online and offline.

my most listened-to song of 2018: the @uberconference hold song.

— Kelly Burns (@kellyaburns) February 12, 2018

The @uberconference hold song is literally a country song called “On Hold” written solely for the purpose of being on hold. This is the greatest thing ever. #uberconference

— TK (@createdbytk) November 22, 2017

I’m on hold for an @uberconference call and the music is pretty darn entertaining. I gotta know who came up with this idea.

— Todd Budin (@budin_todd) January 17, 2018

4. Consistency is Key in B2B Word of Mouth

In addition to the curse of following the leader, one of the other traps B2B companies fall into is believing that, because competition for attention is fierce, they must do something really BIG to break through.

This is why you see so many brands trying their hand at “surprise and delight” these days. Surprise and delight is where you take one customer, in a particular circumstance, and you treat that customer much differently than the rest. Hotels do this a lot. Some guy checks into the Hyatt and finds a live, panda bear sitting on the bed, with a bamboo tree nearby.

The premise is that this one customer will be so surprised and delighted by this unexpected encounter that he will talk about it in social media. It will then go viral, and eventually jump from Reddit (or some such) to the traditional press, earning the hotel lots of attention along the way.

This might work.

Or, you just end up with an upset customer and panda scat in your hotel.

As I mentioned at this workshop, my team and I are not against surprise and delight as a tactic. But let’s call it what it is: a publicity stunt. It’s NOT a word of mouth strategy, because it’s not reliable or repeatable or scalable.

Surprise and delight and “going viral” are lottery tickets, not strategic plans for B2B word of mouth.

5. The Worst Way to Create a Talk Trigger

The least effective approach to word of mouth strategy is the one that almost everyone attempts:

Getting everyone in the conference room to brainstorm a differentiator that will create customer chatter. 

If it was that easy, the Talk Trigger would already exist. If effective word of mouth strategy was simply a matter of getting some smart folks together with some donuts and riffing until gold appears, EVERY company would have a word of mouth strategy instead of ZERO companies having a word of mouth strategy.

The best way to create a Talk Trigger is the hard way: research, process, customer interviews, trial, and optimization.

We use a six-step process when creating word of mouth strategy for clients. It’s the same process we document in the Talk Triggers book.

The single most important component of that process is the customer interviews. B2B companies simply must talk to their customers (we recommend 15 interviews across three customer segments) to determine what buyers expect today at each step of the customer journey.

Once you know what people expect, you then know what they do NOT expect. And that’s where the Talk Trigger lives: in the land of the unexpected.

6. B2B Word of Mouth is a 50/50 Proposition (at best)

One of my favorite research projects we conducted for the book looked at customer attitudes about word of mouth and company differentiators.

We found that in the best case scenario, 47% of customers might conceivably converse about a Talk Trigger.

These are the Uniqueness Seekers (25% of the population) and the Experience Advisors (22% of the population). These two groups are particularly delighted about something unusual or disproportionately predisposed to recommending things to other people.

The other two customer segments are the Fundamentals Fans and the Skeptics. These two groups are unlikely to become volunteer marketers and tell someone else about a business that does something different. The first group is not at all enchanted by differentiators, and the latter believes that anything different is probably a gimmick or a trick.

What this means is that expectations for word of mouth in B2B must be reasonable and realistic. The most successful program in the world will find approximately half of all customers talking about it. That doesn’t at all diminish the importance of word of mouth, and in fact, accentuates the critical nature of creating chatter among that 47%.

Related post: The 3 Types of Customers That Will Talk About Your Business

7. Measuring B2B Word of Mouth

Like with anything that happens at least partially offline, it can be difficult to attribute specific sales to word of mouth, unless the company has a defined customer referral program. Outside of that, however, here’s how we recommend measuring word of mouth efficacy: with the three question survey.

Ask every customer (or every nth customer, if you must) three questions. Ask these questions once they’ve made the purchase and have definitely experienced whatever the Talk Trigger is for the company. If possible, ask every customer these questions at approximately the same post-trigger exposure interval, to eliminate recency bias.

In many cases, B2B companies will ask these questions by tagging them onto an existing Net Promoter Score survey, or other customer satisfaction gauge.

Question 1: Online or offline, how many people have you told about your experiences with our company?

Here, you’re trying to gauge actual information exchange, and whether this customer is likely to engage in word of mouth, or already has.

Question 2: What did you say?

Here, you’re looking for mention of the Talk Trigger. This would be an unaided mention.

Question 3: Did you talk about any of these things? 

Here, you present a list of company characteristics, each with a checkbox. Seven characteristics should be listed, one of which is the Talk Trigger. You’re looking for mention of the Talk Trigger in a prompted, aided list.

There is a LOT MORE to successful B2B word of mouth than I’ve covered here, but I wanted to give you a good summary of some of the key pieces, drawn from my workshop with Desantis Breindel.

If you have questions, or we can help you, find me in social media or contact us here.

The post The 7 Key Principles of B2B Word of Mouth Marketing appeared first on Convince and Convert: Social Media Consulting and Content Marketing Consulting.

https://ift.tt/2PpXTbe

[mariasolemarionqi]

The 7 Key Principles of B2B Word of Mouth Marketing

The best way to grow any company is for the customers of that company to do the growing for you. Word of mouth is the most effective (and cost-effective) method of customer acquisition and growth.

In B2B, word of mouth is exceptionally important:

91% of B2B purchases are influenced by word of mouth. Click To Tweet .

Why is word of mouth so vital in B2B companies? The relative expense of most B2B purchases outweighs B2C buys. Thus, there is a greater risk associated with B2B decision making. And when risk is higher, customers seek to avoid mistakes. And a primary way buyers avoid mistakes is by seeking the opinions of current customers, via online and offline word of mouth recommendations and referrals.

But what’s fascinating to me is that we know this to be true, in our gut. OF COURSE, word of mouth is important for B2B. Yet, very few companies have an actual strategy for generating customer conversations.

Word of mouth just may be the most important element of B2B success, but scant attention is actually paid to it. Remarkable!

Last week, I had the pleasure of conducting a half-day workshop on Talk Triggers and B2B word of mouth marketing, in cooperation with our friends at Desantis Breindel, a terrific B2B branding agency located in New York City.

They brought together an interesting collection of B2B marketing leaders from a variety of industries, including health care, law, finance and beyond.

I won’t go through the entire workshop here, as that would be pretty lengthy. (If you’re interested in a workshop of your own, let us know.)  Meanwhile, here are 7 key principles of B2B word of mouth marketing.

1. B2B Word of Mouth Must be Purposeful

Most (nearly all) companies take a puzzling laissez-faire approach to word of mouth. They just assume that customers will take about the business. But will they? And if so, what are they saying?

Given the importance of word of mouth in B2B (see 91% figure above), is it wise to be lax about word of mouth strategy?

Our philosophy at Convince & Convert is that all brands can (and should) do word of mouth on purpose, by figuring out an effective Talk Trigger. A Talk Trigger is a strategic, operational differentiator that compels word of mouth, reliably creating customer chatter on an ongoing basis.

2. Talk Triggers Aren’t Really Marketing

A Talk Trigger is something that you DO differently in your business, not something you SAY different in your business.

A Talk Trigger is not classic marketing. It’s not a price or a promotion. It’s not a contest or a coupon. It’s an operational choice that subsequently produces a marketing advantage by turning customers into volunteer marketers.

Freshbooks, for example, is a B2B accounting software company. Their Talk Trigger is their series of free events called I Make a Living. These events help connect their freelancer customers to the broader community, and to Freshbooks. They create a LOT of conversation.

Kudos to @freshbooks for an outstanding and thought-provoking event on how we make the future (with @monikabielskyte) in Toronto tonight! #imakealiving

— Anne Kavanagh (@anne_kavanagh) October 31, 2018

Absolutely insightful, engaging and thought provoking keynote by @monikabielskyte at @freshbooks #imakealiving . Thank you pic.twitter.com/3Y2sH46y6M

— TorontoDiana (@TorontoDiana) October 30, 2018

3. Same is Lame

Many B2B companies play follow the leader. They analyze and evaluate which companies are flourishing in their category or market, and then try to mimic the best characteristics of that brand. This makes sense, as it reduces risk. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, and so forth.

But the problem with that approach is that it doesn’t create any chatter.

Competency doesn’t create conversations. You’ve never called a friend and told them, “Guess what? I flicked a switch and … a light turned on!”

Competency reduces churn and prevents customer defection. But it doesn’t give customers the urge to tell a story about the business, which is the coin of the word of mouth realm.

If you want customers to reliably tell stories about the company, the firm must do something those customers do NOT expect. The best B2B organizations choose to do just one thing different in the operations of the company, and in making that choice, they end up with a Talk Trigger that powers their word of mouth strategy.

Think about Uberconference. This free conference calling service is essentially the same as any other company in the category. Except for the Talk Trigger, which is hilarious on-hold music, written and performed by their CEO, that creates a TON of chatter about the company, online and offline.

my most listened-to song of 2018: the @uberconference hold song.

— Kelly Burns (@kellyaburns) February 12, 2018

The @uberconference hold song is literally a country song called “On Hold” written solely for the purpose of being on hold. This is the greatest thing ever. #uberconference

— TK (@createdbytk) November 22, 2017

I’m on hold for an @uberconference call and the music is pretty darn entertaining. I gotta know who came up with this idea.

— Todd Budin (@budin_todd) January 17, 2018

4. Consistency is Key in B2B Word of Mouth

In addition to the curse of following the leader, one of the other traps B2B companies fall into is believing that, because competition for attention is fierce, they must do something really BIG to break through.

This is why you see so many brands trying their hand at “surprise and delight” these days. Surprise and delight is where you take one customer, in a particular circumstance, and you treat that customer much differently than the rest. Hotels do this a lot. Some guy checks into the Hyatt and finds a live, panda bear sitting on the bed, with a bamboo tree nearby.

The premise is that this one customer will be so surprised and delighted by this unexpected encounter that he will talk about it in social media. It will then go viral, and eventually jump from Reddit (or some such) to the traditional press, earning the hotel lots of attention along the way.

This might work.

Or, you just end up with an upset customer and panda scat in your hotel.

As I mentioned at this workshop, my team and I are not against surprise and delight as a tactic. But let’s call it what it is: a publicity stunt. It’s NOT a word of mouth strategy, because it’s not reliable or repeatable or scalable.

Surprise and delight and “going viral” are lottery tickets, not strategic plans for B2B word of mouth.

5. The Worst Way to Create a Talk Trigger

The least effective approach to word of mouth strategy is the one that almost everyone attempts:

Getting everyone in the conference room to brainstorm a differentiator that will create customer chatter. 

If it was that easy, the Talk Trigger would already exist. If effective word of mouth strategy was simply a matter of getting some smart folks together with some donuts and riffing until gold appears, EVERY company would have a word of mouth strategy instead of ZERO companies having a word of mouth strategy.

The best way to create a Talk Trigger is the hard way: research, process, customer interviews, trial, and optimization.

We use a six-step process when creating word of mouth strategy for clients. It’s the same process we document in the Talk Triggers book.

The single most important component of that process is the customer interviews. B2B companies simply must talk to their customers (we recommend 15 interviews across three customer segments) to determine what buyers expect today at each step of the customer journey.

Once you know what people expect, you then know what they do NOT expect. And that’s where the Talk Trigger lives: in the land of the unexpected.

6. B2B Word of Mouth is a 50/50 Proposition (at best)

One of my favorite research projects we conducted for the book looked at customer attitudes about word of mouth and company differentiators.

We found that in the best case scenario, 47% of customers might conceivably converse about a Talk Trigger.

These are the Uniqueness Seekers (25% of the population) and the Experience Advisors (22% of the population). These two groups are particularly delighted about something unusual or disproportionately predisposed to recommending things to other people.

The other two customer segments are the Fundamentals Fans and the Skeptics. These two groups are unlikely to become volunteer marketers and tell someone else about a business that does something different. The first group is not at all enchanted by differentiators, and the latter believes that anything different is probably a gimmick or a trick.

What this means is that expectations for word of mouth in B2B must be reasonable and realistic. The most successful program in the world will find approximately half of all customers talking about it. That doesn’t at all diminish the importance of word of mouth, and in fact, accentuates the critical nature of creating chatter among that 47%.

Related post: The 3 Types of Customers That Will Talk About Your Business

7. Measuring B2B Word of Mouth

Like with anything that happens at least partially offline, it can be difficult to attribute specific sales to word of mouth, unless the company has a defined customer referral program. Outside of that, however, here’s how we recommend measuring word of mouth efficacy: with the three question survey.

Ask every customer (or every nth customer, if you must) three questions. Ask these questions once they’ve made the purchase and have definitely experienced whatever the Talk Trigger is for the company. If possible, ask every customer these questions at approximately the same post-trigger exposure interval, to eliminate recency bias.

In many cases, B2B companies will ask these questions by tagging them onto an existing Net Promoter Score survey, or other customer satisfaction gauge.

Question 1: Online or offline, how many people have you told about your experiences with our company?

Here, you’re trying to gauge actual information exchange, and whether this customer is likely to engage in word of mouth, or already has.

Question 2: What did you say?

Here, you’re looking for mention of the Talk Trigger. This would be an unaided mention.

Question 3: Did you talk about any of these things? 

Here, you present a list of company characteristics, each with a checkbox. Seven characteristics should be listed, one of which is the Talk Trigger. You’re looking for mention of the Talk Trigger in a prompted, aided list.

There is a LOT MORE to successful B2B word of mouth than I’ve covered here, but I wanted to give you a good summary of some of the key pieces, drawn from my workshop with Desantis Breindel.

If you have questions, or we can help you, find me in social media or contact us here.

The post The 7 Key Principles of B2B Word of Mouth Marketing appeared first on Convince and Convert: Social Media Consulting and Content Marketing Consulting.

https://ift.tt/2PpXTbe

[dainiaolivahm]

The 7 Key Principles of B2B Word of Mouth Marketing

The best way to grow any company is for the customers of that company to do the growing for you. Word of mouth is the most effective (and cost-effective) method of customer acquisition and growth.

In B2B, word of mouth is exceptionally important:

91% of B2B purchases are influenced by word of mouth. Click To Tweet .

Why is word of mouth so vital in B2B companies? The relative expense of most B2B purchases outweighs B2C buys. Thus, there is a greater risk associated with B2B decision making. And when risk is higher, customers seek to avoid mistakes. And a primary way buyers avoid mistakes is by seeking the opinions of current customers, via online and offline word of mouth recommendations and referrals.

But what’s fascinating to me is that we know this to be true, in our gut. OF COURSE, word of mouth is important for B2B. Yet, very few companies have an actual strategy for generating customer conversations.

Word of mouth just may be the most important element of B2B success, but scant attention is actually paid to it. Remarkable!

Last week, I had the pleasure of conducting a half-day workshop on Talk Triggers and B2B word of mouth marketing, in cooperation with our friends at Desantis Breindel, a terrific B2B branding agency located in New York City.

They brought together an interesting collection of B2B marketing leaders from a variety of industries, including health care, law, finance and beyond.

I won’t go through the entire workshop here, as that would be pretty lengthy. (If you’re interested in a workshop of your own, let us know.)  Meanwhile, here are 7 key principles of B2B word of mouth marketing.

1. B2B Word of Mouth Must be Purposeful

Most (nearly all) companies take a puzzling laissez-faire approach to word of mouth. They just assume that customers will take about the business. But will they? And if so, what are they saying?

Given the importance of word of mouth in B2B (see 91% figure above), is it wise to be lax about word of mouth strategy?

Our philosophy at Convince & Convert is that all brands can (and should) do word of mouth on purpose, by figuring out an effective Talk Trigger. A Talk Trigger is a strategic, operational differentiator that compels word of mouth, reliably creating customer chatter on an ongoing basis.

2. Talk Triggers Aren’t Really Marketing

A Talk Trigger is something that you DO differently in your business, not something you SAY different in your business.

A Talk Trigger is not classic marketing. It’s not a price or a promotion. It’s not a contest or a coupon. It’s an operational choice that subsequently produces a marketing advantage by turning customers into volunteer marketers.

Freshbooks, for example, is a B2B accounting software company. Their Talk Trigger is their series of free events called I Make a Living. These events help connect their freelancer customers to the broader community, and to Freshbooks. They create a LOT of conversation.

Kudos to @freshbooks for an outstanding and thought-provoking event on how we make the future (with @monikabielskyte) in Toronto tonight! #imakealiving

— Anne Kavanagh (@anne_kavanagh) October 31, 2018

Absolutely insightful, engaging and thought provoking keynote by @monikabielskyte at @freshbooks #imakealiving . Thank you pic.twitter.com/3Y2sH46y6M

— TorontoDiana (@TorontoDiana) October 30, 2018

3. Same is Lame

Many B2B companies play follow the leader. They analyze and evaluate which companies are flourishing in their category or market, and then try to mimic the best characteristics of that brand. This makes sense, as it reduces risk. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, and so forth.

But the problem with that approach is that it doesn’t create any chatter.

Competency doesn’t create conversations. You’ve never called a friend and told them, “Guess what? I flicked a switch and … a light turned on!”

Competency reduces churn and prevents customer defection. But it doesn’t give customers the urge to tell a story about the business, which is the coin of the word of mouth realm.

If you want customers to reliably tell stories about the company, the firm must do something those customers do NOT expect. The best B2B organizations choose to do just one thing different in the operations of the company, and in making that choice, they end up with a Talk Trigger that powers their word of mouth strategy.

Think about Uberconference. This free conference calling service is essentially the same as any other company in the category. Except for the Talk Trigger, which is hilarious on-hold music, written and performed by their CEO, that creates a TON of chatter about the company, online and offline.

my most listened-to song of 2018: the @uberconference hold song.

— Kelly Burns (@kellyaburns) February 12, 2018

The @uberconference hold song is literally a country song called “On Hold” written solely for the purpose of being on hold. This is the greatest thing ever. #uberconference

— TK (@createdbytk) November 22, 2017

I’m on hold for an @uberconference call and the music is pretty darn entertaining. I gotta know who came up with this idea.

— Todd Budin (@budin_todd) January 17, 2018

4. Consistency is Key in B2B Word of Mouth

In addition to the curse of following the leader, one of the other traps B2B companies fall into is believing that, because competition for attention is fierce, they must do something really BIG to break through.

This is why you see so many brands trying their hand at “surprise and delight” these days. Surprise and delight is where you take one customer, in a particular circumstance, and you treat that customer much differently than the rest. Hotels do this a lot. Some guy checks into the Hyatt and finds a live, panda bear sitting on the bed, with a bamboo tree nearby.

The premise is that this one customer will be so surprised and delighted by this unexpected encounter that he will talk about it in social media. It will then go viral, and eventually jump from Reddit (or some such) to the traditional press, earning the hotel lots of attention along the way.

This might work.

Or, you just end up with an upset customer and panda scat in your hotel.

As I mentioned at this workshop, my team and I are not against surprise and delight as a tactic. But let’s call it what it is: a publicity stunt. It’s NOT a word of mouth strategy, because it’s not reliable or repeatable or scalable.

Surprise and delight and “going viral” are lottery tickets, not strategic plans for B2B word of mouth.

5. The Worst Way to Create a Talk Trigger

The least effective approach to word of mouth strategy is the one that almost everyone attempts:

Getting everyone in the conference room to brainstorm a differentiator that will create customer chatter. 

If it was that easy, the Talk Trigger would already exist. If effective word of mouth strategy was simply a matter of getting some smart folks together with some donuts and riffing until gold appears, EVERY company would have a word of mouth strategy instead of ZERO companies having a word of mouth strategy.

The best way to create a Talk Trigger is the hard way: research, process, customer interviews, trial, and optimization.

We use a six-step process when creating word of mouth strategy for clients. It’s the same process we document in the Talk Triggers book.

The single most important component of that process is the customer interviews. B2B companies simply must talk to their customers (we recommend 15 interviews across three customer segments) to determine what buyers expect today at each step of the customer journey.

Once you know what people expect, you then know what they do NOT expect. And that’s where the Talk Trigger lives: in the land of the unexpected.

6. B2B Word of Mouth is a 50/50 Proposition (at best)

One of my favorite research projects we conducted for the book looked at customer attitudes about word of mouth and company differentiators.

We found that in the best case scenario, 47% of customers might conceivably converse about a Talk Trigger.

These are the Uniqueness Seekers (25% of the population) and the Experience Advisors (22% of the population). These two groups are particularly delighted about something unusual or disproportionately predisposed to recommending things to other people.

The other two customer segments are the Fundamentals Fans and the Skeptics. These two groups are unlikely to become volunteer marketers and tell someone else about a business that does something different. The first group is not at all enchanted by differentiators, and the latter believes that anything different is probably a gimmick or a trick.

What this means is that expectations for word of mouth in B2B must be reasonable and realistic. The most successful program in the world will find approximately half of all customers talking about it. That doesn’t at all diminish the importance of word of mouth, and in fact, accentuates the critical nature of creating chatter among that 47%.

Related post: The 3 Types of Customers That Will Talk About Your Business

7. Measuring B2B Word of Mouth

Like with anything that happens at least partially offline, it can be difficult to attribute specific sales to word of mouth, unless the company has a defined customer referral program. Outside of that, however, here’s how we recommend measuring word of mouth efficacy: with the three question survey.

Ask every customer (or every nth customer, if you must) three questions. Ask these questions once they’ve made the purchase and have definitely experienced whatever the Talk Trigger is for the company. If possible, ask every customer these questions at approximately the same post-trigger exposure interval, to eliminate recency bias.

In many cases, B2B companies will ask these questions by tagging them onto an existing Net Promoter Score survey, or other customer satisfaction gauge.

Question 1: Online or offline, how many people have you told about your experiences with our company?

Here, you’re trying to gauge actual information exchange, and whether this customer is likely to engage in word of mouth, or already has.

Question 2: What did you say?

Here, you’re looking for mention of the Talk Trigger. This would be an unaided mention.

Question 3: Did you talk about any of these things? 

Here, you present a list of company characteristics, each with a checkbox. Seven characteristics should be listed, one of which is the Talk Trigger. You’re looking for mention of the Talk Trigger in a prompted, aided list.

There is a LOT MORE to successful B2B word of mouth than I’ve covered here, but I wanted to give you a good summary of some of the key pieces, drawn from my workshop with Desantis Breindel.

If you have questions, or we can help you, find me in social media or contact us here.

The post The 7 Key Principles of B2B Word of Mouth Marketing appeared first on Convince and Convert: Social Media Consulting and Content Marketing Consulting.

https://ift.tt/2PpXTbe

[oldschoolgameshowguy-blog]

TJW = WTF?

A CBS Classic is Revived But Changes Nearly Everything (And Not In A Good Way)

“From Hollywood…it’s the game where knowledge is king and Lady Luck is queen...”

Sadly, the “knowledge” is largely gone from TBS’s revival of “The Joker’s Wild”, a classic CBS game show that rewarded actual book knowledge with cash and prizes of up to $25,000. Entertainer Snoop Dogg brought back a new version of this Jack Barry vehicle in October of 2017 and for those who remember and loved the original, this one is a huge disappointment. First, though, let me comment on the few plusses the show has.

It’s worth watching the show - once - to see the beautiful new set. Barry would have been proud (even envious). The designers created a stage that’s colorful, lively and engaging. You even hear slot machine sounds like you’d hear in a real casino. The 1990 revival had its own technology-driven machine – three TV monitors where the category wheels would “spin” but they weren’t terribly exciting to watch. At least with modern technology, the new Joker machine is something truly impressive.

Sadly, that’s where the list of positives end for me. There’s so many things about the new version of the show that I disliked upon viewing the premiere. The audience. The questions. The changed flow of play. And most certainly the host. If you’re a fan of Snoop Dogg, you’ll probably hate everything I’m about to say and dismiss me as a “hater”. Fine. But if you don’t know Snoop, you may agree with me. 

Snoop’s persona – at least on the show – is that of a drug-friendly casino operator party guy with a streetwise sense of humor. That, of course, is nothing like Jack Barry or, really, any other quiz show emcee of any of the classics. Even Gene Rayburn of legendary “Match Game” fame was wild and wacky without seeming stoned. And I don’t find Snoop’s manner appealing – in the context of a quiz show. As a music performer, not being all there can add to an artist’s charisma. But not for leading a vehicle like this. (Michael Strahan of ABC’s “The $100,000 Pyramid” would have been a finer choice to helm this revival. Frankly, I can think of at least a dozen other people I’d rather had been at the helm of the new “Joker”.)

Snoop is supposed to be the main draw for the show - but with the original, it wasn't about the host. It was about the game, at least for the viewers. Jack Barry was an affable host, like many emcees of the day, but he wasn’t playing a version of himself, and a seedy one at that. He was actually trying to clean up his image, having been implicated in The Quiz Show Scandals of the 1950’s. He needed to be squeaky clean. Luckily, it worked.

A good game show host - to me - knows how to set up tension and the big moments. Snoop seems too high - or high acting - to be tense about anything. It’s all about laughs, money, and that “big-ass” slot machine. If you’re watching a game, as a viewer, you don’t want to be going, “What just happened?”

Snoop has famously said “The Joker’s Wild” was one of his favorite shows growing up, and that he used to watch it with his grandmother. Why was it a favorite? Was it the big money? The set? It looks like that the oversized slot machine what fascinated him because I don’t get the impression it was the intellect displayed by the contestants. I don’t think Snoop would have done so well as a contestant on the CBS original.

The new version of the game is not a general knowledge quiz – at least, as you’d see on “Jeopardy!” with Alex Trebek. (I wish there were more examples of knowledge game shows on American TV but they’ve all but disappeared – American TV producers presume that the average viewer doesn’t find book smarts entertaining. When I was growing up, viewers had more selections – among the better of them, “The Who, What or Where Game” and “College Bowl”. Even shows like “Gambit” or “Hollywood Squares” had questions where viewers could learn something factual.)

On the new version of “Joker” questions are more about streetwise subjects or comedic themes. The category names are too silly to recount here, but I was reminded of the equally frivolous names chosen for categories on the 2000 “Pyramid” revival with Donny Osmond (which I was glad to see bite the dust). Sometimes it’s possible to be too cutesy.

Even the 1990 version with Pat Finn, disappointing as that was, had quiz questions about real topics – they were given as definitions, where the player had to define the person, place or thing Finn read off his cards. The message Snoop’s “Joker” sends is that there's zero value in knowing school subjects or facts. With who made it into the White House in 2016, this show is suitable for a “post-fact” era.

New “Joker” isn’t even the same game structurally. Designed to fit within a single-half hour, with no carry-over champions (even the current incarnation of Family Feud with Steve Harvey lets families stay five days to win a new SUV), this version of “Joker” is a contest to see who can amass the most money during game play, not whether they can reach a particular amount. That dramatically changes the game. There are fewer moments for natural tension. A wrong answer to a question can’t be picked up by an opponent for credit, as in the original version. There is no “final spin” rule if a player reaches the winning amount before players have had an equal number of spins. And a three-Joker spin is lame, as it only counts for $500 towards a daily total. There is no Joker’s Jackpot, no five-game big payoff, and no sizzle associated with getting Jokers anymore, no matter how much the audience joins in with “Joker! Joker!! Joker!!!!”

Speaking of the audience (and the players), in scanning with my eyes, I didn’t see anyone present over the age of 30.  Just a soundstage full of twenty-somethings. Snoop is probably the oldest person on that stage. The original “Joker” wasn’t so narrow in its appeal, and that might have been part of the reason it was a classic – you could see students, fathers, mothers, teachers, artists, young adults, older adults, everyone. It seems that Snoop’s version of the show basically says, “If you ain’t a club kid, or you don’t dig me, you too old.” I think lots of college students across the country who tune in “Jeopardy!” daily would disagree. (I was also non-plussed by the standing ovation at the beginning of the show – I remember when standing ovations had to be earned.)

If you ran the original CBS version of “Joker” now, it wouldn't connect with Snoop’s target audience on the TBS version, because that target audience doesn't value book knowledge – at least not in this arena. Get outta here, nerds – you’re not wanted here.

I am also not a fan of “lovely assistants” unless they “work.” It seems that these days, a female assistant (it’s always gotta be a female) is comely and attractive but doesn’t necessarily have much in the way of personality. Catch 21’s Nikki was pretty but bland also. The last show with a “lovely assistant” I could handle was “Wheel of Fortune” - Vanna White may be long in the tooth, but she has depth and seems more real. On the original CBS version, Jack handled the entire show, solo – and even the 1990 revival with Pat Finn was a single-star affair.

How could this version of “Joker” ever have been green-lighted for production? Simple - times have changed. Broadcasters and production companies are greedier than ever, and ever eager to push the envelope to get a new generation of viewers, and the eyeballs advertisers covet. I suppose some of that is to be expected, but taste seems to have been lost with it. And it borders on sacrilege to take an old brand and put something else entirely with it - it’s just wrong.

“The Joker’s Wild” was never intended to be a comedy game show. There have been other game shows that were expressly designed as humor vehicles - “Make Me Laugh”, “The Hollywood Squares”, “The Gong Show”, “Match Game”, “Every Second Counts”, “Can You Top This?” - but taking a venerated quiz and turning it into a comedy vehicle isn't a good idea. If I had my way, this show would have been called something else.

Another part of the problem is that the industry itself has changed since the 1970s - indeed, the concept of entertainment is more than TV and radio - and producers, accountants and suits are greedier than ever, wanting a guaranteed success. Most folk under 30 now have TV, streaming music, social media, gaming consoles, and dating/hookup apps to entertain themselves. And so TV has to have bigger and bigger spectacles to push the envelope – witness, a game show with open drug references (“420”).

And then you have what I could call “new generation” producers – folks whose interest is in leaving their own mark on a classic genre rather than respecting what made the genre work – it’s all about them. I have seen revivals come and go in recent years, but they never stay. They all have to be edgy. They all have to be “explicit”. They all have to be bawdy. I dare one game show packager out there to bring back a classic (I’m thinking “The Big Showdown” from ABC) without retooling every g’damned thing from top to bottom for an exclusive 18 to 24 aged demographic. If I had the independent wealth and connections, I’d do it myself but...here I sit, typing a blog instead.

Richard Kline’s company tried to redo “Joker” in 1990 by changing nearly everything and it was a flop – only after several months in did they try to retool the game with classic “Joker” rules, but it was too late then. However, having seen this new “Joker”, that ‘90 version is no longer the worst.

TBS is a cable channel so they can show offerings like this. I just cannot imagine CBS running this - except as a gag. If Snoop’s “Joker” gains traction, look for an SNL parody one of these coming weekends.

If you wanted to have a game show in a night club - and all that implies - you'd get Snoop’s reboot of “The Joker’s Wild”. With the exception of the beautiful new set, there is little that a fan of the original CBS “Joker” will enjoy. “Jeopardy!” or quiz show fans can rightfully wince. And TBS? Nice gimmick, guys, but you better promote the hell out of this show to your millennial “base” to make it a commercial success.

Meantime, I will stick to reruns of the classic CBS show on You Tube.

GRADE: F

[trendingnewsb]

For 100 Days, I Illustrated People In Exchange For Their Secrets

I’m Terence Eduarte and I’m an illustrator from the Philippines. Every person has an interesting story to tell and I wanted to channel that into this project. I gathered a lot of silly secrets from friends and unexpected confessions from strangers around the world.

Here are some of them.

More info: Instagram | trnz.co

“I’m acting in a play where this guy has to act like he’s secretly in love with me. But when the play ends, we go back to real life where I’m secretly in love with him.”

“I sometimes feel alone even if I’m with friends. I feel like I’m just an add-on when we’re together.”

“I want to ask my half-sister if our estranged dad ever touched her back when they were living under the same roof. Or was I his only victim?”

Image credits: www.instagram.com

“I always check if my friends are doing well, but people rarely ask how I am.”

Image credits: www.instagram.com

“Half of my friends are people I wish I never met.”

Image credits: www.instagram.com

“I created an imaginary friend as a coping mechanism for my depression. Now I want to make her disappear but she keeps coming back.”

Image credits: www.instagram.com

“I told my unborn son I wasn’t ready to be loved by him. The next day I miscarried.”

Image credits: www.instagram.com

“It was my 28th birthday last week and no one remembered it. Not a single call or text from my friends and family. So I woke up the next day, sat outside my house and cried quietly. My dog came and started crying too. It was the most beautiful thing someone has ever done for me.”

Image credits: www.instagram.com

“I like playing with other people’s feelings because i’m unsure about mine.”

Image credits: www.instagram.com

“I’ve cheated on quite a few guys. And now that I’ve found the love of my life, he wasn’t ready for me. He was seeing me while he was seeing his ex. If there’s any way to portray Karma in its purest, most painful and justified form, this is it.”

Image credits: www.instagram.com

“I burned the suicide note I wrote a month ago. Today is a good day.”

Image credits: www.instagram.com

“I wrote letters to my girlfriend everyday. Everyday until her lung cancer took her away from me.”

Image credits: www.instagram.com

“I got drugged and raped by someone i knew and can’t get myself to tell anyone for fear of victim blaming. But on most days, i can’t help but victim blame myself.”

“Half of my friends are people I wish I never met.”

“I don’t like my close friends being close with other people.”

“I have a weird obsession with smelling the scent of paper and hearing the sound while flipping through the pages.”

“I can’t stand the ringing of bells. Every time I hear it, my heart beats faster. It reminds me of my mom’s voice and the bells on her keys that would ring every single time she comes home. God knows what she had done to me.”

“Everyone thinks I can drive but I just choose not to. The truth is, I never pass the test.”

“I fall in love too easily and terribly hard. I don’t know if that’s a good or bad thing.”

“I’m a perfectionist who isn’t perfect at all. It’s exhausting.”

“I contributed to my friends’ success and resent them for not including me once they became famous.”

“I was abused when I was 6 or 7. I can’t remember which age, but I remember what the abuser did. He drew naked figures, showed me where to touch, made me touch things… Things I don’t want to remember. I didn’t know it was wrong back then, but I’m grateful that it didn’t go any further. It left a big impact on me and I always blamed myself for it. I got OCD after that. My every action repeated, my daily routines repeated. I wash repeatedly, lock and unlock doors repeatedly, read my school books repeatedly. I repeat words 50 to 100 times till It satisfies me. It affected my life so much, and no one knew why. And no one knew why.”

“He is the love of my life but I found that out too late. Whenever there is snow, it reminds me of him.”

“It’s been two and a half years but I still can’t tell those around me that I am HIV positive. So instead of focusing on what I can’t do, I volunteer to help change the stigma around HIV.”

“One day, I came home from the university and my mother told me to cover up my legs in front of my friends. She didn’t want them to realize I had gained weight and she said she was just protecting me from gossip. The comment didn’t leave my mind and I’ve been bulimic ever since.”

“Many years ago, I was so broke that I stole a roll of toilet paper from my office.”

“I made up an entire part of my life. People believe some of the things actually happened, but really a lot of my stories are fake.”

“It sucks to feel unimportant. I know you shouldn’t really expect much from people but it hurts to see when they only come to you when they need something. They only remember me, not because of me, but for something they might gain.”

“I am generally thankful and happy about what I’ve got in my life. But I always feel like there is a black hole in my heart that no one would understand, some pain just won’t go away and I’m trying hard to live with it.”

“I haven’t been posting any photo with my face on it since last year. I feel better than ever.”

“I am constantly thinking about what other people think of me. And I don’t think that’s healthy.”

“Father’s day will always be the time of the year I’ll envy everybody for posting how great their dads are. I used to be sad about it but now, I think I accepted that he won’t be that hero and role model every father should be.”

“I buy stuff I can’t afford to make people believe I am someone who I am not. They see Prada and Burberry while my bank account is on the verge of ruining my life.”

“I’m in the military so I can’t be open about my suicidal thoughts. They constantly give you training on suicide prevention but they don’t get that once you make the decision to take your life nothing changes that decision unless you have true hope, and that’s my husband for me. I don’t think very many people out there have true hope.”

“I wanted to visit my grandmother in the hospital but it was a long walk and I got lazy. The next day, she passed away.”

“I am a journalist secretly dating a high-profile and controversial public official. If this gets out, I’m almost certain I’ll lose my job.”

“I dont have a twitter account but I still stalk him on twitter just to check how he’s doing. He seems to be doing fine. I’m not…”

“My father usually takes my milk after coming home drunk and suffering from stomach pain. One night, I said no to him to punish him for his drinking. A week later, he had a fatal accident after another drink. I really feel sorry for not offering my dad the milk that night.”

“I try my hardest to make people happy because I know what it’s like to feel absolutely worthless. I don’t want anyone else to feel like that.”

“Although the nasty rumors that circulated about me were untrue, I don’t bother correcting them and let people think I’m not a virgin anymore. But the truth is, I haven’t even had my first kiss.”

“I don’t know what I want…”

“I’m on the album cover of my cheating, lying, sociopathic ex-boyfriend. I’m still wondering if I should be ashamed or proud.”

“I like to think the best of people but I actually think most humans are terrible.”

“I’ve posted photos and stories on social media to show people how interesting and colorful my life is. However, it’s just the total opposite.”

“I tell people my mom died from cancer when she actually died from cirrhosis due to alcoholism. I didn’t want people to think she was a horrible mother. We were close no matter how different the alcohol made her sometimes.”

“I’m always the one who gets left in a relationship. I thought I was okay. I try to convince myself that I am okay. But there are nights when I just have sudden breakdowns and I ask myself so many questions. Is something wrong with me… am I really not worth fighting for?”

“I overdo things and I constantly make myself the center of attention because I’m terrified of being forgotten.”

“I lost my smile a long time ago. Now I go everywhere hoping nobody will notice that this isn’t my smile anymore.”

“I was born into a culture that never accepted me. Born to an Arab father and a European mother; I am constantly fighting two sides of my identity. Anxiety and depression has completely taken over me.”

“I tell my close friends a lot of details about my relationship issues. I can never tell if they actually do care, or if they’re just pretending.”

“Sometimes I feel like I am a really abusive person that only use people for my own good. This scares me so much.”

“I think I’ll never find my other half because I have a hard time expressing and feeling love; it might sound weird but I would only feel love after watching films and series because of the beauty they hold.”

“Five years ago, I caught my third girlfriend cheating on me. That was the time I decided to have a boyfriend instead.”

“I got drugged and raped by someone i knew and can’t get myself to tell anyone for fear of victim blaming. But on most days, i can’t help but victim blame myself.”

“It’s been two years but I still think about my ex every day. It’s cliche and lame I know. I wish I had a better secret.”

“I am in love with my favorite singer that lives halfway across the world. I often write her letters and I’m hoping we can be friends one day.”

“My first relationship was a physically and emotionally abusive one. When that finally ended, it took me a while to get used to the idea that love can actually be expressed in ways other than what I have experienced.”

“I talk to myself everyday in the mirror to rehearse how my day would likely turn out. Unfortunately, it never turns out the way I planned.”

“I never learned how to swim. So I just tell people that I have chlorine allergy. It’s quite embarrassing.”

“To this day, only my boyfriend and I know that I was pregnant at age 18. Not even my poem on a bathroom door was interpreted correctly by strangers. The secret continues to be safe between us and the hotel room where it ended.”

“I’m so self-conscious that I can’t even go to the grocery without comparing myself to other women there.”

“My bipolar disorder is completely out of control. No one knows, because I’m good at being fine.”

“I got rejected by my friends because they think I’m gay. I tried telling them that I’m not but I’m starting to realize they might be right. I’m lost between myself and our friendship.”

“I’m ashamed that I take pleasure in my friends fighting with their partners. It makes me feel better about being perpetually single.”

“I’m ten years older than my sister but she’s marrying someone my age. I tell people I’m unhappy about the age difference, but I think the real reason is I might be jealous.”

from Viral News HQ http://ift.tt/2vUcfFG via Viral News HQ

[nathandgibsca]

Stop All Social Media Activity (Organic) | Solve For A Profitable Reality

Life is short.

It is time to point out an ugly truth, and to be the brave person that you are, the intelligent rational assessor of reality that you are, and kill all the organic social media activity by your company.

All of it.

Seems radical, but let’s take it one step at a time.

To give you a sense of the depth and breadth of ideas I’ll cover today, here are the sections in this post:

+ The Promise of Marketing Utopia. + The Broken Promise of Marketing Utopia, Implications. + The Broken Promise of Marketing Utopia: Examples. + Win Big: Stop Posting Content for Organic Reach On Social Channels. + Is the Huge Audience on Social Media Platforms Completely Useless? + Is the Idea of Marketing Utopia Permanently Dead? + Bottom-line.

I urge you to have an open mind. My plan is to challenge your critical thinking skills, and share lessons that will apply broadly across the professional effort you put day in and day out. Most of all, I’m excited to frame an important problem, and present solutions that will transform an important part of your marketing strategy.

Let’s go!

The Promise of Marketing Utopia. 

I hate pimping (what marketing has come to be). I adore building meaningful relationships – the kind of long-term connections where a brand truly gives a f about their customers, and gives something of value in exchange for their attention. I LOVE brands that can pull this off, and support them with my un-asked-for evangelism and precious $$$s.

Hence, you can imagine how gosh darn excited I was at the advent of Facebook and Twitter (first real social networks). There were a billion people there, spending a meaningful amount of time on these wonderful platforms. Excitedly, brands could have a presence (a "page") where they could contribute meaningful updates (info-snacks) in order to be a part of the organic conversations people were already having by the tens of millions.

Daily meaningful brand connections would be converted into brand familiarity, shifts in brand perception, feeding brand loyalty. #orgasmic

If you were a travel company, meaningful would now translate into helping feed wanderlust. The company could contribute info-snacks about where people should go, exposing the coolest places in the world, helping people travel better via tips, pictures, videos… you know… communicating travel love. The one thing a travel company would have in common with travel customers. The most imaginative travel marketers could even extend this opportunity to helping connect the purpose of their existence, selling tickets and hotel rooms, to helping people create moments of happy by crafting day/s of escape from the rough and tumble of life.

Glorious, right? If you work at Expedia or Cathay Pacific, does that not make you want to come to work and, for at least a part of your employment, create meaning? How rare is that!

If you were Cisco, meaningful would mean sharing info-snacks whose entire purpose could be to get Engineers promoted. Share tips, ideas, schematics, usage shortcuts, creative implementations, solutions to top problems that hold Engineers back… you know… understanding your audience deeply and give them something of value in exchange for their attention. The most imaginative B2B marketers could even figure out how to be a part of solving some of the deepest entrenched problems in the industry (STEM education, equal opportunity, + +) and in turn add an entire value-system to their brands.

Amazing, right?

Marketing based on something real, rather than a coupon or company brochure.

The Broken Promise of Marketing Utopia, Implications. 

None of the above transpired on Social platforms.

Businesses of all types, including Google (SMB, Main), got on amazing platforms like Facebook (and Weibo, Instagram, Pintrest etc.) and started pimping. All that their collective imagination could manifest in a Utopia-possible environment was: LOOK ME I AM SO PRETTY!! BUY NOW!!!

Stuff that is a turn off.

Consider the Google’s first FB page above, it is a complete disaster with not a single post in the last six months being of even five seconds of value to any small business. That page, or the main one, is not an overt Buy Now, but if you think critically like the tough Marketer I want you to be you’ll have a hard time finding a single post that’s solving for Google’s human customers. Almost every single one is pimping Google (or pimping random research Google has commissioned – to pimp Google!). The non-value is so transparent, yet they post every single day something that basically is solving for Google (although only God knows what that is). If someone bothers to interact with the post, the posted comment is a spam or totally useless. Yet. They keep posting. Polluting utopia.

Google is not unique in not understanding the promise, checkout your company’s FB page.

This strategy by businesses lead to what I now call the Zuck Death Spiral. ZDS.

Real humans on Social platforms quickly got turned off by these low-grade Social contributions/posts by companies. That meant humans (us!) refused to engage with them. This was noticed by Team Zuck, who started to slowly turn down the presence of company posts in User feeds. This lead to less Reach for brands. Which in turn lead to even fewer customer interactions for content posted by brands. Which was duly noted once more by Team Zuck. Which… you know where this is going, tightened the screws on organic Reach even more. And, here we are in a barren desert for brands on FB.

Most brands get less than 1% Reach via their organic contributions on social platforms. And, less than 1% engagement of any kind from that less than 1% reached (identified using the best social media metrics: Conversation Rate, Amplification Rate, Applause Rate).

ZDS is solving for FB, as FB should, and it is an attempt to solve for FB’s users.

So… If all you can do is overtly or covertly pimp… And, pimping is not cheap (that Google page, and your company’s page, has pictures, videos, an agency deployed, internal company employees with a “social media execution checklist”, senior leadership time committed, and more)… And, all it does is get you 1% Reach, max, with almost no engagement… Why do you still have an active (organic) social media effort?

Why is this reality not smacking some sense into your marketing strategy?

The Broken Promise of Marketing Utopia: Examples. 

Is it difficult to check if your brand is caught up in the Zuck Death Spiral? No.

Do you have access to any data to measure how deeply non-impactful your organic Social Media efforts are? OMG, yes.

Everything you need, data and information, to do an audit is public.

All you have to do is visit your company’s Facebook page (or Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc. presence).

Let me show you what to look for. Let’s start with Expedia. They have 6.4 million Likes as of today. Go look at any post on the page if you are an Expedia employee.

First thing you’ll look at is the Applause Rate (likes, other emotions, you’ll see it right under the photo). That number is 75. Divide that by 6,462,977 (potential audience size today).

0.00113%. That’s a painful stab in your heart.

Next Conversation Rate (comments, you’ll see a total at the end of your posts). 7. Divide that by 6,462,977. A sad 0.00011%.

Finally, my favorite sign that you truly added value to a human rather than pimp, Amplification Rate (shares). 3/6,462,977. At this point you are weeping with me: 0.00005%.

To give you some context as to how insanely lame these numbers are, Expedia.com received 59,400,000 Visits in May 2017. This post accomplished 75+7+3. More people walk into the Expedia lobby in Bellevue, WA, every second of every minute.

You might be screaming that is not fair Avinash, the Zuck Death Spiral ensures that a tiny fraction of 6,462,977 are seeing Expedia’s posts! Very fair point. But, is the Social Media Budget at Expedia not justified based on the potential from 6,462,977? Would Expedia commit it’s multi-million-dollar budget to Social Media based on the potential to engage 75+7+3 people on Planet Earth?

One final point. Brand destruction.

Pretty much every single comment on pretty much every single Expedia post is a complaint about how horrible Expedia is (from personal experience I know this is not true). If your Facebook presence is solely to inspire people (see Trish Sayler above) to create clever rhymes about how bad you are… Why are you on Social Media?

Ignore the active smearing of the Expedia brand, let’s go back to data: Is it worth have 75 | 7 | 3 as the value delivered from an organic Social Media strategy for a company with 54,900,000 Visits?

My answer is an emphatic no. Expedia should immediately cease 100% of its organic Social activity.

1/100th of the Social Media budget could be spent on any other random digital strategy to get 75+7+3, and have zero brand destruction!

Oh. And while I’m focusing on Facebook for the sake of simplicity, everything in this post applies to all other Social Media channels. The Utopia failures. The lack of imagination. The small numbers. The uselessness.

Here for example is a post on Twitter by Expedia:

The numbers: 9 | 2 | 2. Divided by 391,000 (followers).

You can do the math and assess dent in the universe this content contribution from Expedia is making.

Almost nothing. Technically, perhaps less than nothing.

I hate making recommendations based on outliers, please know that Expedia is the norm. Hence, the title of this blog post.

Here’s a B2B example, a company I think well of… Cisco.

Go through the same analysis.

Your numbers are 31 | 1 | 3. Divided by 845,921.

Would you spend a single hard-earned Cisco router and switches dollar to get this as the return from a multi-million dollar Social Media budget?

Like my company, your company, and Expedia, Cisco gets no value from their organic Social Media efforts. Technically, Cisco is getting negative returns once you account for the people, process, tools, agency, leadership investments.

Let’s switch gears and look at a B2C company with a massively positive opportunity to leverage the word Social in every way on these platforms… Chick-fil-A.

Better numbers, as you might expect.

1k | 89 | 73. Divided by 7,775,155.

Consider it. Chick-fil-A could buy the most remnant TV inventory on a channel least watched by humans during the middle of the night and get better Reach. And they can also measure how many of them walked into a Chick-fil-A in the next 12 hours.

Does the above number justify custom videos, images, active posting by Click-fil-A on Facebook?

One final example to bring this home.

ProjectManager.com is a lovely tool. It is wonderful that they use folks like Jennifer Bridges, Susanne Madsen and others to create very helpful Project Management videos on YouTube. It seems they are a medium-sized business.

Here’s their Facebook page:

69 | 0 | 25. Divided by 62,951.

Pound for pound, better performance than all three (four including Google) companies above. Shame on them.

Still. Are the resulting Applause Rate, Conversation Rate and Amplification Rate enough for a smaller business to use it’s precious marketing dollars on this Social Media strategy/impact?

Consider this as well for all brands… There is no native discovery model on these Social channels. Your content will live for 20 minutes and then it is dead. Not just because of ZDS, but also because there is no Search behavior by users or a method that would deliver Serendipitous Discovery of content you post.

Unlike say on YouTube, or your Blog, where your Subscribers will see the content right away, and then through Bing and Yandex and YouTube itself people will find your content when relevant and keep viewing it. Your content there has a live beyond 20 minutes.

Win Big: Stop Posting Content for Organic Reach On Social Channels. 

Given the numbers above, and be sure to check any other Social Media channel your company is actively investing in, I hope you have the input you need to apply your critical thinking skills.

Let me give you one final push: You have better alternatives to drive short and long-term Profitability for your company (rather than investing in organic Social Media).

Here’s an example.

I write an insightful newsletter with the singular aim of improving your salary. The Marketing < > Analytics Intersect. You should sign up. It is a companion to this blog, I write once a week there and once a month here.

One year into it’s existence, TMAI has 21,246 Subscribers.

Measuring Open Rates for email is difficult (the tiny pixel ESPs use to track opens are not executed by default for most email programs). Even with that flaw in reporting, TMAI has Open Rates of around 9,000 (9,895 precisely for the last one).  Around 1,000 people (912 for the last one) take an action that is of value to me.

A random person, me, can get 9,000 opens of my content, at least a thousand active engagements with my brand whenever I want. I have over 1,000,000 Social Media followers across the five platforms (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, Instagram). I can’t even get 1/100th the impact.

My simple unsexy email newsletter strategy crushes the on paper potential of one million Social Media followers.

And, beyond the impact… I also directly own the relationships with my 21,246 Subscribers, I own the data, the relationship exists on my platform, and I can use it as creatively I want to use it with no limitation on type of content (text or video or dancing penguin gifs).

Why should your company be on Social Media 5x per day to get a lousy 20 interactions with your brand? How is that acceptable ROI from your investment in a 5 person Social Media team, a Social Media Agency, a Social Media analytics tool, a Social Media auto-posting tool and more?

Could you not get 100x ROI from the 0.25 person that's running your email newsletter?

Could you not just take all that Team, Agency, Tool, money, throw it into AdWords or AOL Display Ads and not get massively higher ROI, of any kind, in 10 minutes?

Could you not get better ROI taking all that money and buying remnant inventory on your local Television channel?

Could you not get better ROI if you just took that money and bought free lunch for the employees in your building every other day?

OMG, you most definitely can.

So. Why are you on Social Media?

Is it fun to shout in a vacuum?

Why does it not feel dirty to go waste your shareholder's money?

Stop it then.

Welcome to the world of higher standards for impact delivered. Feel cleaner and prouder coming to work every day as a Marketer/CMO.

Is the Huge Audience on Social Media Platforms Completely Useless? 

NO!

There are a couple of billion people on Facebook (and billions or hundreds of millions on other Social channels). From an advertising perspective, that’s still an audience that might be of value to your business.

Kill your organic Social strategy completely, switch to a paid Social Media strategy.

Buy advertising from Facebook. I’ll make it easy, click this link!

Buy advertising from Twitter. From Snapchat. LinkedIn. Oh and WeChat and Line.

This simple switch from the fuzzy Organic goals to concrete Paid goals will give the one thing your Social Media Marketing strategy was missing: Purpose.

It is now easy to define why the heck are you spending money on Social Media? To drive short and medium-term brand and performance outcomes.

Fabulous.

Set aside the useless metrics like Impressions and 3-second Video Views. Set aside hard to judge and equally useless Like and Follow counts. Measure the hard stuff that you can show a direct line to company profit.

Define a purpose for the money you are spending.

For the clients I’ve worked with across the world, expressed behavior of the users suggests that the largest cluster of intent is See. There is a little bit of Think and a little bit of Care. (This is why Social marketing strategies that target Do intent yield extremely poor results.)

[Bonus Read: See-Think-Do-Care Business Framework]

If the purpose is to execute See and Care intent marketing strategies (in the old world sometimes incompletely referred to as brand marketing), you can use the following amongst my favorite metrics to deliver accountability:

1. Unaided Brand Recall 2. Likelihood to Recommend 3. Lift in Purchase Intent 4. Shift in Brand Perception (negative to neutral, neutral to positive, positive to proactive evangelism) 5. Lifetime Value

Humans have measured these using primary and secondary research methods for 3,500 years. Quite easy to do the same for your newly focused paid Social advertising efforts.

[Bonus Read: Brand Measurement: Analytics & Metrics for Branding Campaigns]

If on the other hand the purpose of your paid Social advertising is to target Think and/or Do intent, you should measure the impact using the following across your digital – and pan-digital presence:

1. Recency & Frequency 2. Loyalty 3. Task Completion Rate 4. Assisted Conversions 5. Macro-Outcomes Rate 6. Economic Value

We have measured these for a long time on the web. You can use your quantitative tools to measure most of these (Google Analytics, Adobe, True Social Metrics). And. You can measure these for your ecommerce, non-ecommerce, B2B, B2C, pure content, non-profit, or whatever else kind of delicious business you are running.

Now, you’ll hold your agency and employees accountable for delivering business profitability for your Social efforts just as you do for any other advertising effort – Search or TV or Email.

Just as you would do in all those other cases, do more paid Social advertising if the metrics show a business impact and improve/eliminate your paid Social efforts if they don’t.

It will mean a different Social content strategy, different targeting strategy (leveraging rich Social signals), and a different landing page/app strategy. Proper end-to-end user and business optimization. Nirvana, delivered by that magical word… Purpose.

The path to your salary and job promotion is also now crystal-clear. Right?

Is the Idea of Marketing Utopia Permanently Dead? 

I’ve seen the near-future, and I believe we’ll get to Utopia Marketing.

The fact that companies don’t know how to be human, how to take even 20% of their people plus budget and invest optimally in understanding humans and deliver something of value to those humans is deeply heartbreaking.

Yes, I can blame the short-term quarterly focus of the CMOs and the SELL, SELL, SELL MORE incentives they create for you to earn your bonus. But still, how heartbreaking is it that not even 1% of us could convince our CMOs to allow us to do what Social was actually good at? How sad is it that we have such little influence? I blame us.

Still. I am optimistic that Marketing Utopia, as I’ve imagined it at the top of this post, is not dead. I think the solution will be to get rid of the humans from the process!

What? Human marketing by getting rid of humans?

Yes. Hear me out.

I think AI/Machine Learning will solve this problem.

Today, humans and their limited ability to process data, and the finite incentives in place, are the reason we burned Utopia to the ground. We simply can’t process billions of signals across tens of millions of touch points across millions of people, and figure out the best message at every moment and its short, medium, and long-term business value.

Current advances in ML already give me hope that algorithms will understand intent a billion trillion times better than your current employees AND these algorithms will have the inherent capabilities to process billions of data points to truly understand complex patterns of user behavior and a robust understanding across all that to know exactly what delivers business profit.

Companies can then take the equivalent of their Brand and Social budgets and allow smarter algorithms to deliver the right message to the right person at the right time across all clusters of intent. All the while, optimizing for long-term business profitability.

It will help that Machine Learning is not embolden to trivial company politics. :)

[Bonus Read: Artificial Intelligence: Implications On Marketing, Analytics, And You]

Bottom-line.

While I’m recommending you stop doing something, hearing no is not super-inspiring, I hope you’ll see that my goal is help you think more critically about where you spend your personal time and your company’s money.

I also hope you’ll see how the shift in strategy I’m recommending brings Social in line with your other advertising efforts, allowing for a ton more focus on your Social efforts and a billion times more accountability.

Finally, I hope you feel optimistic that around the horizon lurk technological solutions that will allow for the manifestation of the beautiful humanity that exists in your company (even if we have to take human employees out of the equation to get there – don’t worry, they’ll still, for now, be responsible for the novel elements required).

Demand more from Social, because Social can deliver more.

As always, it is your turn now.

If you’ve achieved sustained success from your organic Social Media content strategy, would you please share your example? If you disagree and believe Marketers should invest in organic Social despite poor Reach, ApR, CoR, and AmR, would you please share how you see value/impact? If you’ve successfully dumped organic and pivoted to paid Social, please share stories of your victory. Are you as optimistic as I am that Machine Learning based intelligence will solve optimally for the Utopia opportunity?

I look forward to hearing your smart perspectives and cogent challenges.

Thank you.

Stop All Social Media Activity (Organic) | Solve For A Profitable Reality is a post from: Occam's Razor by Avinash Kaushik

from SEO Tips https://www.kaushik.net/avinash/stop-organic-social-media-marketing-solve-for-profit/