No More "Like and Share" - Maybe

Facebook's new policy about keeping "Engagement Bait" out of the newsfeed is intended to eliminate posts with "like and share this post" calls to action.  But liking and sharing is part of the engagement that marketers really want.

So what do they do?

First, let's take a step back and analyze why "like and share this post" has been so common.  There are three things to consider:

1.  Some marketers do superficial planning and all they want is good numbers.  Liking and sharing does cause more people to see a post, although they may not be the best people, i.e. the ideal prospective customers or key stakeholders of the business/organization making the original post. 

2.  Facebook has also been downgrading the ability of a post to spread via organic sharing and liking.  Facebook is a business and they are incentivizing marketers to spend money to deliver their posts (which are really advertising messages) to constituents who are selected by various categories and interests. 

3.  Persuasion theory says that we get people to do big things by first getting them to do little things that build towards the big thing.  Liking and sharing our posts demonstrates support, and repeated small demonstrations of such support set the stage for larger acts of support, like buying our product or voting for our candidate.  So, getting people to like and share has a strategic role.

So how do we respond to the new Facebook rules?

Marketing communications is about brand persuasion, and brand persuasion requires engagement -- a two-way interactive relationship between our business/organization and our customers/constituents.

So, we still want people to like and share, but we'll have to use more creative language.  Language like "pass this along" and "tell us what you think" are likely to become more common.  And marketers will need to monitor their insights (statistical reports from Facebook) about performance of messages containing various calls to action, to see which work best.

But the reality is that as social media matures, it is going to cost more money to use it for marketing.

Up to now, the costs have been relatively hidden -- the staff time for people to create posts and maintain the page, and the costs to develop customized content, like graphics, photography, and video.

More and more, organizations are going to need to use paid reach to get their messages to the people they want to reach. A small business may be able to do this with only $15 or $20 a post, a handful of times a month, reaching a few thousand people. Bigger businesses, of course, will need more money to reach the hundreds of thousands or millions of people they need.

So, strategic planning, including budgeting, is a new reality of Social Media Marketing.

2018: A critical year in Star Trek History

SS Botany Bay

We don't know a lot about the early 21st Century from historical references made on-screen in Star Trek, but we know something BIG happened in 2018 - the invention of Impulse Engine Drive.

One of the things that has always appealed to me about Star Trek is how all of the timeline and historical references fit together, an important part of the overall continuity of the multiple Trek TV series.  From the beginning, the producers have worked hard to ensure that they remember what they have said previously, and everything (usually) holds together well. 

So, this essay is based on many tidbits of what onscreen characters have said about 2018, and this general era in Star Trek history.


Star Trek is not in OUR Timeline

First, we have to admit that we do not live in the Star Trek universe.  As early as the 1990s, things happened in Star Trek history that did not happen in our own.  Specifically, the Eugenics Warshappened, in which genetically engineered "supermen" conquered a lot of countries and ruled as dictators.  Khan was one of them.

The Eugenics Wars are a fixed point in time in Star Trek history.  So what can we infer, based in this fact?

Humans, at least in one secret laboratory somewhere, had genetic engineering technology in the 20th Century that was already well in advance of what we have today.  The Original Series referred to Khan as the result of "selective breeding" but The Wrath of Khan and later TV episodes amended that to "genetic engineering."  Assuming that Khan and the supermen aged at normal speed (not TV magic rapid aging) means that somebody had advanced genetic engineering capability in the 1950s or 60s, which in our timeline we didn't have.


DY-100 Space Craft

We know that in 1996, the last of the supermen was overthrown, and Khan and 81 of his followers escaped Earth in the sublight DY-100 class SS Botany Bay. The Botany Bay, pictured above, appears to be a cargo ship, vaguely like the Hermes in The Martian, with detachable cargo pods. The Botany Bay was a sleeper ship, putting passengers in suspended animation for the months-long trip to Mars or other places int eh solar system.

Having an operational inter-planetary craft in 1996, with functional suspended animation, was certainly beyond what we were capable of in our own timeline.  This implies that humans were capable of transporting heavy cargo to the Moon, Mars, and maybe other places (you don't need a sleeper ship to go to the Moon).


2018, "The Year Everything Changed" 

In 2018 in the Star Trek universe, humans invented the first generation of Impulse Drive. Eventually, Impulse engines would be able to propel a starship close to the speed of light. Even the primitive 2018 first generation would likely have dropped the Mars trip to only weeks, or maybe even days.

(In our own timeline, a possible Electromagnatic Thuster is being tested. If it is proven to actually work, it might be something that could be scaled up to serve as our own version of an Impulse engine.)

The consequences of Impulse Drive in the Trek universe are not discussed on screen but it is clear that a small fleet of DY-100 or similar DY-500 ships, upgraded to employ Impulse engines, would have opened up the solar system to exploration and eventually to colonization.


What Comes Next

In 2037, Earth launched a mission outside the solar system, the Charybdis, which was large enough to carry planetary shuttles and an extensive library, arriving in the Theta 116 star system in 2044. To achieve interstellar distances in seven years certainly required speeds close to the speed of light, i.e. Impulse Drive. 

The 2030s is about the time when Zefram Cochrane was born, who would go on to invent Warp Drive in 2063, after a nuclear war a decade earlier. Within a few more years, the starship Valiant reached the "edge of the galaxy," a century before Kirk and Spock.

So, 2018 is a BIG turning point in the Star Trek parallel universe.  Maybe it will also be in our own. 


Image from: https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/bQgAAOSwTglYkpSy/s-l400.jpg