Marketing in social media is like bathing in mud.
They tell you it works, but the glow wears off very quickly.
This doesn't mean, however, that conferences aren't convened to discuss new techniques or fine restaurants for dinner. This doesn't mean that new methods aren't swiftly deemed infallible or that gurus don't sprout like grass after rain.
It is inevitable, therefore, that they'd sing about it.
I am grateful to PR man and Inc columnist Ed Zitron for first propagating this video, proudly peddled at Social Media Marketing World.
This, you will be moved to hear, was billed as: "Social Media's Mega Conference."
It may well have been entirely mega. However, when attendees were subjected to a megaphonic rendition of a song called "Let's Get Social," I wonder if they felt their own sociability was being severely challenged.
For here were lyrics that included:
I'm showing you things you'll like
Trying to get engagement
Here's some photos from my life
My cat, my kids, some bacon
This song was, according to the sleeve notes on YouTube, "a warm-up for a keynote panel led by Jay Baer (Convince & Convert) on the topic of 'Have We Lost the Social in Social Media?'"
I wonder whether, on hearing this complex ditty, attendees muttered that we'd lost the "melody" from "melodious" and the "sane" from "sanity."
This was billed on YouTube as "a humor-laced theme song."
Not every joke comes across as it might. I leave you, therefore, to bathe in this masterpiece that has kept me awake for the last 48 hours.
I also leave you with another verse from this seminal work:
We're looking for the secret
Of Facebook's Holy Grail
We try to keep from paying
That leads to hashtag #fail