Badass: Making Users Awesome

11

The Challenge

Prologue



Here’s what my “friends” and

social media consultants say:

If your brand’s not on

Facebook, you don’t exist.

Tastemakers!

One word:

Viral Video

YouTube

Twitter. Duh.

Uh, no, it’s the

In

tention Economy

It’s the Attention Economy

Content Strategy!

Actually it’s the

Sharing Economy

Social Mobile

Gamification

It’s the App Economy

Influencers. It’s all about influencers.

And Pinfluencers. You do have a

Pinterest plan, right?

Don’t out-

spend

the competition,

just out-

friend

and out-

trend

them!

12

The Challenge

Prologue



What does an out-friend/out-trend strategy hope to “win”?

The brand engagement arms race.

They’re on Pinterest? We need to be there. They’ve got

YouTube videos? Let’s do that too. And oh, look, yet another

new social network where our brand needs a “presence.”

Trying to stay one follower, one like, one meme, ahead of

competitors is not a robust, durable strategy. It is not a

sustainable path to long-term success.

A strategy based on out-friend or out-trend the

competition is exhausting and fragile.

And is “engagement” really what we want?

13

The Challenge

Prologue



If it drains our energy to out-engage our competitors, imagine

what all this brand engagement does to ...