What is SociaLingua?

Indeed, “What is SociaLingua?” is the question I’ve been asking since I first saw those persistent ads pop up on my Facebook Homepage many moons ago. The ads were extremely effective, as when I first saw them I did want to know “What is SociaLingua?”. I clicked on the ad and was directed someplace – this was sometimes ago, I believe it was a Facebook page that also had an offsite link, and both told me absolutely nothing. I thought, well that’s interesting; someone is spending money just to ask a question but provide no answer. At the time I thought “sometimes we can be a little slow getting things done, so maybe next time I check there will be an answer”. Building the mystery about their product was a great plan until checked a few more times and still nothing. So I stopped checking.

I imagine if I stopped checking so did many other people, and that’s something they did wrong. They kept the ad posted but the answer was not dynamic, even with maintaining the mystery about the product they could have kept it interesting, provided a small bit of information that changed periodically, a small reward for clicking that would have kept people coming back for more up until the big reveal. Even with that, I have to give credit for that simple and effective campaign that embedded the question “What is SociaLingua?” because many months have passed, and despite my annoyance I am still wondering what SociaLingua is; and so are other people.

In a conversation recently, remembering my annoyance, I brought them up as an example of a company I think is not doing something right in their use of the tech tools available to them. After that conversation I decided to come back and check if they’ve got their act together now, and I was surprised to discover there is now quite a bit of activity on their profile with 23,487 likes, updates on their app, photo albums with thousands of photos going back over a year, as well as commentary from their fans. However, there was still no obvious answer to the question “What is SociaLingua?”. I decided to take matters into my own hand and I did an informal survey asking a handful of people “What is SociaLingua?” Most people were readily familiar with SociaLingua having seen – and I suppose clicked on -the ads as well, but no one actually KNEW what SociaLingua was. Most  said they thought it had something to do with entertainment, and weren’t those the guys who take photos at parties?

I have to give the creators of SociaLingua credit for a few things:

– They created a campaign that was interesting and memorable.

-They seems to have set the standard for how events are covered and the high quality of photos published.

– Their facebook page is now well updated and very interactive.

But on the flip side while I have to give them credit for making me so annoyed I cannot stop wanting an answer to the question “What is SociaLingua?”, and have gone as far as writing a post about it that will have more people asking and wanting to know the answer as well, it fails to translate into the objective – making me use the app. I’m still waiting to find out “What is SociaLingua?” and until I do I cannot decide if it’s something I want. This I think is where the creators are failing. Now that the app is up and running is a good time to explain what it is, so people can decide if they want it.

With 23,487 likes I wouldn’t call the campaign a complete failure, but it’s my belief that  in a market where there are so many things jostling for the consumers limited attention span you should make your product, and information about it as accessible as possible. Perhaps there is more information buried somewhere in their blog and or Facebook page, but I’m not going to dig to find it, and I shouldn’t have to. Is this all just a big tease for something more, bigger? Who knows, so until they catch up with my opinion I’m still asking “What is SociaLingua?” If you find out, please let us know.

—