7 reasons we need to banish “Be remarkable” from the social media lexicon

Amber Naslund of Radian6 wrote a wonderful post last week on social media topics that need to go the glue factory.

One she did not mention was more of a piece of advice: “Be remarkable.”

It’s a real favourite of digital marketing/social media types these days. They throw this gem at you when talking about the kind of content your organization needs to create.

This little nugget of wisdom is terrible because:

1. If you don’t get the fact that you need to stand out in world with millions of blogs/people on socnets/content creators you’re pretty damn stupid.
2. There’s no way to delineate clear action items for achieving this goal.
3. It is like saying “be cool,” to a middle school kid trying to get to first base.
4. The alternative is “be boring,” “be shit” or “be unnoticeable.”
5. A five year old could figure this out if you provided context about the problem to him/her.
6. Marketing has always been about “being remarkable.” Since the dawn of time, if you weren’t you died a quick death.
7. Generally we want to be “unremarkable” if a) we find ourselves in a war zone b) we are walking through a dangerous area at night or c) we are committing a felony. There aren’t a lot of other situations where it comes in handy so, intuitively, we get the upside of “being remarkable.”

Be remarkable, meet the guillotine. You two will be great friends I suspect!