Back in the day, there used to be some golden rules for advertising. Client logos should always be placed in the lower right hand corner. The headline in the top left, left aligned for readability. This way the reader would read the advertisement correctly in a diagonal direction from left to right. Any copy, again should be left aligned and in two columns across the advertising space. Any typeface used should preferably be a serif for better legibility. And the strapline? Place centred under the logo in that right hand corner, of course. These were just a few. And they were all made to be broken.
Nowadays, Social Media – once that seeming doyen of freedom is now being threatened and overwhelmed with many equivalent ‘rules’:
Don’t use too many hashtags on Twitter. Never link your Twitter account to your…err…Linked In account. Post your videos on Facebook. Never spam a #tag stream. Stop just broadcasting.
Blog, Blog and, even, Vlog. Blah, blah and even more blah. Hell, we aren’t just told this once. But ad infinitum by ReTweet, after ReTweet, after ReTweet. OK, we’ve seen it. Everyone involved in Social Recruiting, especially, will have seen it.
So, who will take note? Follow like sheep, so everyone does it identically? Getting the same results as…hmm… tricky, this… but many of these arbiters of ‘How to Use Social Media for Recruiting’ tend not to publish too many results of what their wonderful ‘Rules of Social Engagement’ have gleaned.
We respect that. We’ve run many a campaign – to varying degrees of success. They’ve always been no less than surprising. Some extremely interesting. And others so exciting with what they can/have achieved in so many different ways. We haven’t been able to publicise these too much as yet – but there will be some more ‘insights’ to follow shortly.
But we’re still learning. Probably always will. And that’s what’s great about all of this. Guess that’s because we’ve always looked at things ‘creatively’. Let’s experiment. Play with it. And things are always changing. Take the past few days flurry of interest in Quora, for example. Why bother about others ‘rules’, when you find your own new ‘tricks’? What works for one, doesn’t for another. What have you got to lose?
andsome blog 
Matt Alder Said:
on 01/06/2011 at 9:29 am
#agreed
garethmjones Said:
on 01/06/2011 at 10:39 am
It’s like a global police force gaining momentum. Blog police, twitter police, LinkedIn police, #chat police, Hashtag police. As you say, do this do that, don’t do this don’t do that. So many effing experts, so many ‘new rules’. WTF??!
Blogging was going on long before ‘sowshul meedya’ became the most annoying buzz term and money making scam. And it was about logging your thoughts on the web. simple as that. Your thoughts, how you wanted. Whatever you wanted to say.
Now, its a marketing tool and everyone’s telling me what i should and shouldn’t say on it, what i should write for ‘my audience’ etc etc.
Well, eff off I say to all of youz. Ill write what I fecking well want to and I don’t give a knats fanny if it doesn’t make the ‘top ten’ list of things to masturbate over this year.
Well said chaps.
Kevin Ball Said:
on 01/06/2011 at 10:48 am
Oh, yes. Reminds me of Somerset Maugham – “There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no-one knows what they are”.