Connecting with an audience is the most important goal an advertiser needs to accomplish.  Beyond pushing your agenda, your message and your product… you need to connect with your consumer on their level in order to make your brand or product relevant to their daily lives.

This desire to make a connection inevitably and quite naturally found itself taking over the internet. It makes sense…  Go where the people are.  You cannot get through a single work day without logging on, so why not focus advertising energy to those sites which are visited most.  But, how can you make your efforts social and interactive?  Many have found their answer to be: By incentivizing! How many businesses have you liked simply because you liked them?  Or did they have to ask you to, boasting some sort of promise? Do you still visit those websites or has the social media realm captivated your attention?

This brings me to my title for this piece, AntiSocial Media.  I believe, as I said before, that social media is a necessary evil, but an evil nonetheless.  And while its title implies a form of communicating which promotes social behavior, it, in fact, diminishes our abilities to be social, connect and interact on a personal level.  What’s the need for calling your college buddies to catch up when you can view their lives on the internet, look at pictures of their wedding and see their kids grow up in the posted family photo albums…?  No need to call your friends about buying that new house, just post it and they can take the tour themselves!

This reminds me of the car commercial where the daughter says her parents aren't really living because they don’t have any friends on Facebook, all the while, they are out enjoying their lives while she is sitting at home socializing on her computer, alone.
Through all this quick and easy connection comes a very real disconnect far greater than I think we would like to admit. What’s more important, living your life for you, or so it fills your wall nicely?  Do you take pictures for yourself anymore, or has personal photography reduced itself to the sole purpose of showing off?  I hope we can get back to a healthy balance of communication where we can supplement our lives with technology but not replace it entirely.  Unfortunately, it has become so common, that to not have a presence means you don’t exist.

We continue this trend because “everybody else is doing it”, and I certainly have nothing against the platforms themselves, just what human nature has done with them.  So, we do what we have to, to prove that we exist and that our clients do as well – but I look forward to a time where advancements improve our abilities, instead of hindering them.