The Blog of Ross C Brown

Image: Marfis75 (Flickr)

Social Media consultancy we are social are one the look out for “Rockstar Account Directors“. Sounds great right but as a client would you really put a rockstar in charge of your multi-million dollar brand that you’ve invested years nurturing?  Rockstars are the bad boys of the music industry: trashing hotel rooms, enjoying lines of cocaine in bathroom stalls and indulging in extra-marital affairs. Do you really think putting a ‘rockstar’ in charge of your brand will end well?

And if you do think it is a good idea, why bother with an agency?  Violent addicts are a dime a dozen down south-central LA!

Anyway, my point is this: from gurus to rockstars, too much bullshit is invading the social media space.  It is a sad time indeed when being hardworking and of sound moral fiber in no longer enough. It’s about time Nice Guys started finishing first!

NB: The guys at we are social are awesome.  It’s all this ‘talking up’ of roles and servies as well as the liberal use of flowery language in the industry at large that I object to.

For the last hour or so I’ve been reading Martin Lindstrom’s “Buyology”. In his book, Lindstrom details his research into neuromarketing and how science can provide a better insight into our purchasing decisions.

Lindstrom explains that a lot of our purchasing decisions are made subconsciously and that when asked to explain why we purchase something our rational mind takes over and offers up, often weak, justifications for the purchase. In a television interview posted on his website he offers an example where a woman purchases a Louis Vuitton bag. She justifies this purchasing by referencing the bags superior styling and craftsmanship. Aided by a fMRI study, Lindstrom suggests that the purchase was motivated no by superior craftsmanship but by a desire to show the world here newly acquired wealth and by extension status in society. [...]

I’m looking to add ‘content review’ type functionality into WordPress. In in idea would it would work like this:

When authoring a post/page:
The plugin would prompt, by means of a form field, for a content review date. This date will be the date that the content needs to be reviewed for accuracy/relevance. For example 6 Months, 1 year or 5 years after publication.

On the public facing website:
The post meta data would include the review date.

On the content review date for a specific post:
The plugin would send an email to the content/post/page owner prompting them to log into the website, review the content and set a new review date.

Does anyone know of such a plugin that has the above of similar functionality? I’m working on a proposal for a small organization and such functionality would be the cherry on the cake.

If no plugin exists, how difficult would it be to write such a plugin?

This week, another wave of phishing attacks has hit users of popular social networking, and micorblogging weisite, Twitter. Cyber criminals have duped users, celebrities and organizations using Twitter into revealing their log in credentials. Said credentials were then used to spam and dupe more users of Twitter. While there is nothing new about this type of attack, what is particularly worrying is the extent of this particular attack and the media portrayal of the ‘scammers’ and ‘victims’. [...]

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