Douglas Adam’s book ” A hitchhikers guide to the galaxy” is one of the most memorable books I have read. I love the science fiction story infused with nonsensical wisdom that has resonated with millions, recently #7 on Facebook’s compilation of data from their year long viral meme.
Let’s look at his wisdom and how it can be possibly applied to current social media marketing.
- The Total Perspective Vortex derives its picture of the whole Universe on the principle of extrapolated matter analyses. To explain — since every piece of matter in the Universe is in some way affected by every other piece of matter in the Universe, it is in theory possible to extrapolate the whole of creation — every sun, every planet, their orbits, their composition and their economic and social history from, say, one small piece of fairy cake. The man who invented the Total Perspective Vortex did so basically in order to annoy his wife.
The fairy cake here is the social media content postings. Every piece of content matters as it is part of the whole effort to build your brand or the Total Perspective Vortex. In some way, each fragment of content influences the other. A cohesive and well-planned content strategy is critical to avoid annoying the audience.
2. “You know,” said Arthur, “it’s at times like this, when I’m trapped in a Vogon airlock with a man from Betelgeuse, and about to die of asphyxiation in deep space that I really wish I’d listened to what my mother told me when I was young.”
Lets substitute the “ listened to my mother” with “listened to my audience”. One has to listen to the needs of the audience before formulating a social media strategy for the company. In the other word, respect the audience and do your homework.
3. “Nothing travels faster than the speed of light with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws.”
Bad news in social media postings sure travels fast. Case in point is a recent public post by a large home renovation company. The racist tweet outraged the public; apologies had to be rendered immediately and responsible staff and social media agency had to be fired.
4. All you really need to know for the moment is that the universe is a lot more complicated than you might think, even if you start from a position of thinking it’s pretty damn complicated in the first place.
Yes, social media can be complicated. But, with knowledge and effort, one can tame the beast and use it to further your brand’s image. So, once again, “ Do your homework”.
5. Don’t Panic.
Do not panic but do something if things are not going right. Being passive in social media is usually not going to help. Take the bull by the horns. Revise your strategy; create some content to promote good will, or just dig deeper to find the right solution to win the audience over.
6. “The Ultimate Answer to Life, The Universe and Everything is…42!” This Answer was first calculated by the supercomputer Deep Thought after seven and a half million years of thought. This shocking answer resulted in the construction of an even larger supercomputer, named Earth, which was tasked with determining what the question was in the first place.
42 may or may not be the ultimate answer for your social media strategy.Adams described his choice as ‘a completely ordinary number, a number not just divisible by two but also six and seven. In fact it’s the sort of number that you could without any fear introduce to your parents. In my opinion, Adams was “thinking out of the box” and arrived at this famous numerical conclusion. Extrapolating this to social media- some original thinking may be a good idea to grab your audience.
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