Today, a guest post and a punch of humor from our regular-ish reality check correspondent, Matt Ridings.

I realize this isn’t one of those posts that everyone will agree with. That’s fine, we’re all wrong sometimes, and this time it might as well be you.

In all seriousness though, there’s been a rash of Social Media Mission Statements floating around lately…or more accurately, a rash of posts about why you must have one (google it). Frankly, I don’t get it. Why do we need a mission statement for social media at all? Do we have a mission statement for all of our sub-functions? A copier mission statement? A email mission statement?

Policies? OK, I buy that. Value Statements? I suppose, but shouldn’t they just be the corporations values? Why would they be specific to social media?

Ok, ok. Let’s say I’m wrong. I’ll allow for that possibility, it could happen. But if that’s the case can we please at least create mission statements that actually mean something? The buzzword-laden jargon that I’m reading out there (yes, I’m looking at you) means nothing, says nothing, conveys nothing, and is completely and utterly useless. I know it, and you know it. Most of the ones floating around out there are about as useless as a back pocket on a shirt, so please stop pee’ing on my leg and telling me it’s raining.

“We will work together in the social space to utilize value-added experiences with available resources for the benefit of our consumers and other interested parties “

No. We won’t. What does that even mean?

“Our vision is to engineer dynamic social experiences with maximum improvement for the benefit of our clients and other public bodies”

What? Is the Dilbert Mission Statement Generator* still in use somewhere and nobody told me?

I’m all for anything that rallies people around a common set of values and objectives that they can then measure their activities against. But don’t kid yourself that a social media mission statement will accomplish that. Quick, tell me what your companies mission statement says.

Exactly. There are better ways.

I don’t particularly care for most corporate mission statements, much less a ‘Social Media” Mission Statement. But at least corporate ones can have some external PR value when done correctly. However, if you truly feel that there’s no way your social media team could possibly move forward without its very own to love and take care of then I’ll make it easy for you.

The mission of [company name] is to [adjective] and churn out [adjective] words. [proper name] is [verb ending in "ing"] our time by holding meetings on these useless mission statement exercises. When instead we could be talking about real examples of [company name]‘s values and translating them into how we want to act and be perceived. Why we let go of [proper name] and kept [proper name] I’ll never [verb ending in "ing"] understand. On top of that we brought [proper name] on board and the results have been [adjective]. [expletive]! What we need to do is start with the [noun] then [verb] [proper name] and get someone who can [verb] [noun]. Then we will be able to [verb] some [expletive] sales. This Social Media Mission Statement [noun] makes me want to [verb]. I’d like to [verb] [name] in the [body part]!

Here’s the part where you come in.

First, if you think there really is a purpose for a social media mission statement that couldn’t be better served through some other means then please tell me. It’s possible. I have no doubt that there are some great points of view out there and I’d love to hear yours (I’m being serious about that by the way). All I ask is that you don’t try and make a ‘mission statement’ all of a sudden have a different meaning than it always has.

Second, PLEASE fill out the Mad Lib above and put your version into the comments below. Why? Because it’s funny, that’s why. I’m easily entertained.

Cheers,

Matt Ridings – @techguerilla

*Yes, there used to a Dilbert Mission Statement Generator on the web. To my knowledge it no longer exists. If you know different please point me to it and I’ll link it here.

awesome cartoon courtesy of Tom Fishburne

A post from Brass Tack Thinking
Mad Libs and Social Media Mission Statements

I have always been fascinated by some people’s need to make rules. I’ve recently moved my family me to London, England for the next two years and I’ve learned that the Brits are famous for this. The British take credit for “inventing” many of our modern sports, but really they just formalized the rules around a lot of existing popular sports.

If you look at the English language, it’s mostly a mashup of German and French. I’m no historian, nor a linguist, but from what I understand the German tribes invaded after the Romans left forming many small kingdoms across Britannia. The French from Normandy eventually came over taming the wild Germanic tribes and became the primary ruling class. The Upper class spoke French and the commoners spoke German. But over the years (centuries) of upheaval and churn, an early type of English was formed. Even if you look at Shakespeare’s time, most of the grammar was there but spelling wasn’t that big a deal yet.

But eventually rules were set and taught and we now have hundreds of people who live to correct other people’s grammar and spelling on blogs. What these rules allowed for is for broader teaching of the English language both in reading and writing. Before this point, reading and writing were luxuries of the upper class.

Rules allow for scale.

While the English language has continued to change, with new words being added, like that after many hundreds of years you have British English and American English but if you know one you can read the other one (mostly) just fine.

But if it wasn’t for well-established rules the two languages would be so far apart as to be as unrecognizable as listening to BT (British Telecom) support from someone with a heavy cockney accent (I know this from firsthand experience).

For an example a little closer to home let’s pick on Marketing.

The Marketing world likes to fancy themselves as a bunch of rule breakers, and while that may be true compared to accountants, we’re actually a profession made up mostly of rule makers and rule followers.

As an example: Marketers many decades ago created the Cost Per Thousand (CPM) metric as a way to buy and sell advertising and even though the metric is practically useless as a way of measuring the value or ROI of advertising we still cling to this metric. In fact some poor PR practitioners even try to use an ad equivalency model to measure the value of their PR coverage.

Marketers love informal rules almost as much as formal rules. Marketing managers the World over live and die by Marketing best practices (just another form of rules) and over the last several years have been desperate to find and create best practices around social media.

Before that, the lack of social media adoption was largely due to the lack of best practices aka – rules. In recent years we’ve created countless social media best practices which have enabled enterprise adoption and subsequently, scale.

But when everyone plays by the same rules, rule breakers find a way to get ahead.

Let’s go back the British and the Americans. Looking at the American revolutionary war one can easily ask, how did a bunch of farmers beat the great British army? It defies logic. But if you know anything about warfare back then, the “proper” way to fight a battle was to march your army, in their nice uniforms, in neat orderly lines onto the open battlefield and shoot at each other like civilized people.

The tax dodging Americans knew there was no way they’d win that way so they hid behind trees and deployed guerrilla warfare.

Going back to language, if you look at the Jamaican language, it is a form of English (although you’d never know this from listening to it. In fact while English is the official language in Jamaica, “Jamaican” is considered by linguists, its own language. It developed when slave owners taught their slaves to speak English but the slaves devised their own way of speaking English, which was heavily accented in a way that still kept their communications private. They broke the rules.

A few years ago social media was instantly adopted by social media rule breakers (many of whom didn’t come from Marketing backgrounds BTW). While most companies focused on getting their messages out through heavily rule bound processes between the company and the media, companies who deployed social media could communicate directly with their customers, bypassing all of the rules and most of the
costs.

But social media is quickly becoming rule bound as a byproduct for the need to scale.

While I may make fun of my rule bound friends the truth is that I need them. We need rules. Rules are a good thing. But so is rule breaking.

We’ve spent the last several years creating a lot of rules, and that’s good, but I want to encourage the rule breakers out there to keep breaking rules. And to the rule makers (who are usually the ones in management and in charge of budgets) don’t dismiss the rule breakers. Keep encouraging them and be prepared to take some risks.

If you quit breaking rules you’ll lose out in the end.

There is always a strong need by those that follow the rules to resist those that want to break the rules. For a recent, relevant example look at the kick up around TechCrunch and Mike Arrington’s recent CrunchFund.

MG wrote about why TechCrunch was beating the traditional press and making them nervous:

Traditional journalists may be appalled to learn this. But this is a big key of why TechCrunch kicks their ass in tech coverage. We’re fast and furious in ways they can’t be, because they’re adhering to the old rules. Are there benefits to those old rules? Sure. But in my opinion, the benefits of the way we work far outweighs the benefits of the way they work.

Literally hours later, MG wrote a post on TechCrunch announcing that these broken rules could lead to AOL ousting Mike (even though AOL is also an investor in the fund).

Rules are there for a reason. But rules are also meant to be broken. The trick is knowing when to break them and when to adhere to them. (Please note again I’m not talking about basic rules around human rights.)

My general rule is that if breaking a rule cause people to freak out or even gets a highly emotional response, it’s probably a good one to take a closer look at.

A post from Brass Tack Thinking
Why We Need Rule Breakers and Rule Makers

Today’s Wish People Knew is from Andrew Norcross, one of many ongoing responses to this post. I’m delighted to share the more personal side of some of the folks you might know online and that I’ve enjoyed getting to know better.

Beneath Andrew Norcross‘ colorfully tattooed skin and lanky frame beats the heart of a competitor, a guy whose eclectic background as code geek, athlete and punk-scene lifer has coalesced into a fiercely creative, independent and energetic methodology. He knows the languages. He’s a digital alchemist; Norcross has thought of the things the clients haven’t, because – all together now – that’s his job.

What I Wish People Knew About Me

I’ve always been a geek, but didn’t embrace it until I was in my mid 20′s.

Growing up I was all about science, history, playing Legos, etc. I began reading the paper when I was 6 or 7. While I also played sports, my main focus was always brain related. Hell, I played Dungeons and Dragons for a short time. But I never felt comfortable in that role, since I didn’t have many nerdy role models growing up.

It made me so uncomfortable, in fact, that I ventured into some “bad decisions” that followed me for years. I re-discovered software programming when I was 26 and I haven’t looked back since. And since it’s now considered “cool” to be a geek / nerd, I fit right now. The ironic thing being that as I’ve grown up, I’m not longer uncomfortable with my overall nerdiness. In fact, it’s how I make my living while still being able to get tattoo’d at will and cuss on the internet.

I’m the son of a (very liberal) Baptist minister and an Irish Catholic mother.

Similar to Meg Fowler‘s childhood, I dealt with a lot of the stereotypes of being a preacher’s kid. Folks assumed the same things about me that they did about her. That being said, I did go the “wild” route, but it was hard to tell based on my outward appearance. I was quiet, shy, and usually kept to myself. The funnier part was when they’d meet my dad. They expected fire and brimstone, instead they got a guy who liked football and (later in life) gadgets and cigars. If he weren’t a minister, he’d be an accountant. That I’m sure of.

I had no idea I was poor growing up.

In case you weren’t aware,the vast majority of ministers don’t make a lot of money. And since they were raising 3 kids (myself being the youngest), my mom didn’t start working full time until I was in grade school. So money was usually tight. Funny thing was, we had no idea. We never went without. We moved to a part of Florida that went through a large boom in the mid-80′s, so we ended up living in a weathlier area of town by default.

The best example of this? My senior year I drove a 1986 Dodge Aries (the 2 door “sport” model). I parked next to a Ford Expedition and a Mercedes. Both brand-new. But I never felt “less than” or inferior because of it. I’m beyond grateful for the fact that my parents instilled good values and morals in me, not materialism.

I haven’t read an actual book since high school.

I know, I know, there are lists of books everywhere outlining the best business / tech / entrepanuer books I should be reading. But I haven’t read a book cover to cover since my senior year AP English Literature class. That’s not to say I don’t read. I read the local paper, magazines, blogs, etc. Just not actual books. I even tried to re-read Catcher In The Rye when Salinger died, but could only make it halfway through. I simply don’t have the attention span. Which brings me to…

I have pretty severe ADD.

Yeah, I know, ADD (and ADHD, which aren’t the same things) are all the rage. Everyone seems to have it now, and this generation’s kids are medicated to the hilt (or so I’m told). But in my case, it’s very real and touches almost every aspect of my life. I was diagnosed when I was a young kid (8 or 9, if I remember correctly) but I refused to take any medication or other treatment until I was 26. I learned to cope the best I could, and I was lucky that I was able to do well in school (until college) without a lot of effort or concentration.

However, as I got older, it worsened to the point that I was unable to focus on any words (printed or on the screen) for more than a few minutes without them beginning to swirl as though I was on LSD. When my ex wife and I were expecting our son, I became worried that I wouldn’t be able to focus on things important to raising him, and something bad would happen. New parent fears and all. So I began treatment and it’s probably the single most important thing I’ve done for myself.

I doubt I would be successful without it.

A post from Brass Tack Thinking
What I Wish People Knew: Andrew Norcross