Rise of the Machines in the Social Media Space

1
Rise of the Machines in the Social Media Space?
This article was first written in 2012 by Aniketh
Dsouza on Social Samosa and reached 200,000
people in less than 24 hours. The purpose of this
article was What most Social Media Executives
should know before they join an agency or look
for a job change. I have off late been insisting
social media executives have these words on a
sticky note at their desks at all times Allow
me to explain further,
2
As an executive, you are usually bogged down by
activities such as regular content creation,
response management, idea execution, online
reputation management, reporting etc. Doing this
makes you operationally well-equipped but from a
higher perspective, you are simply a part of a
bigger machine that is processing output without
contributing anything to what you are executing.
What this implies is that you have actually
trained yourself to be a robot. Eventually, you
begin to realize this and plunge to take a break
from the company or eventually quit it simply
because you are tired of the monotony at work.
You are tired of being a robot, a machine. You
now want to be human. You want to break free.
You want to enjoy your life. Humans, on the other
hand, enjoy work. They really do. No, Im not
talking about those workaholics. Im talking
about people who love what they do. The reason
they love what they do is that they have a
purpose, a cause. Their purpose is to learn for
themselves. It is the same purpose you once had
when you first joined that organization. These
humans (in the social media space) are the ones
who use brands to learn for themselves. By
doing so, it wouldnt matter to them which brand
they get to handle. First we need to identify the
problem. Then we need to answer it (Answered by a
Human in Italics) The root cause of why you are
acting feeling the way you are is because you
have become dependent on someone for everything
leaving the execution bit. Let me break this down
for you.
3

• You have become overly dependent You realize
  that someone up there is always available to
  help you when you have to face a problem. A Human
  believes in himself to find answers. He thinks,
  evaluates the problem. He never gives up
  searching for answers. May simply Google them
• You are too scared to make mistakes You always
  depend on a superior which implies that you
  shift your responsibility onto the superior. A
  Human learns from his mistakes
• You are unwilling to experiment You dont want
  to evaluate anything new for yourself and
• depend on someone else to do it for you. The
  person who does it, is the Human
• You have put on your blinders You focus only on
  things that matter to your brand and are
  unwilling to explore any new project that are
  beyond the scope of your brands work.
• Humans are explorers. They dont care what source
  they get to learn from they are always
• hungry.
• You restrain from learning something new just
  because you have not been assigned the
• tasked. Humans ask their superior to involve them
  in newer project so that they get to learn
  something new
• You do not reason anymore You now blindly follow
  orders without asking a question back to your
  superior. You seem to be no longer interested in
  know why you are doing, what you are doing?
  Humans crave to seek the reasoning from their
  superiors before executing an activity
• You are a copycat You focus on copying a
  campaign blindly without reasoning. Humans steal
  concepts rather than blindly copying them, map
  them with their audience and create an
  irresistibly new campaign which earns them credit
• You have preferences You say you can focus on
  managing a few brands better than other
• brands because you are interested in them. Humans
  dont have preferences, they can adapt simply
  because they can have learned for themselves.
• When you have succeeded in doing this, you will
  have overcome the fear of turning into a robot at
  your workplace. This will enable you to grow in
  your organization. You will have become Human
  once again. You will have broken free.
• Read More About How to track whos mentioning
  you via Google Search?