Name-dropping, as in “using the name of someone famous or popular to let other people know you are yourself popular and have friends” is a tacky practice, especially when not done properly. By properly I mean knowing the person you are talking about and whose name you are using in an effort to promote yourself or add value to your opinion.
Lately I have been meeting with a lot of agencies and professional from the digital industry in China and I have noticed a really hot trend among these fellows : the “social media” name-dropping. Have you noticed too?
You get to talk with anyone involved in the internet business and then at some point you hear “Yeah, we do social media too”. I have the feeling most of them are just saying it for the sake of not feeling leftout in the digital game – on both sides, agencies and brands.
I’m like “Really? What do you do?”. Most times I get a “We go on Chinese social networks sites, blabla”. But it is no long before the conversation dries up.
So, before I typed the term “social media” into Google trends, I had a slight idea about how would look the graph.
As we can see, there’s a lot of talk but who can walk the walk?
And who can moon-walk?
You made some good points there. I did a search on the topic and found most people will agree with your blog.