Back to basics
by PatrickMason
Image by andreaweckerle via Flickr
Is social media important?
I have been struggling with how to position social media in my head. Is it phenomena, technique, flash in the pan or something else?
I find myself entering into philosophical conversation with clients all the time that break out in the middle of a nice neat little seminar. I am in the middle of presenting the basics of social media, and someone asks the big question, “What does it mean?” Indeed.
I am a fan of basics. I figure if you get the basics right, you are ahead of 90% of the crowd, move to the basics plus one level of sophistication and you are an expert, two levels and you are world class. So, to break the question down I look to the basics.
What composes social media? My definition has always been getting people to do things with and for each other without direct involvement of an institution.
Why do business care? Because it can be more effective than them trying to do it themselves.
How does it work? It depends on the Internet, which connects everybody, and lets him or her share information quickly, cheaply and easily.
So, if those are the basics, why is it important? I think the answer is again, basic. It lets people do what they want to do naturally, connect. People are social, they want to talk, yell, touch, feel, complain, smile, laugh and gossip. The Internet, that mighty facilitator of all change, is a connecting technology. People have jumped on it so hard because of just that, connections, connections connections, it’s what we are wired for, and what we are about.
So, what is social media about? It’s about connections. Why is it happening so much now? Because it is an extension of us, it’s what we want to do anyway; now we just have more ways to do it. The tools, the underlying technology and the cost are all there and right for our times. Will it last? Yes, it will last as long as we want to connect. And finally, is it important to business? You betcha. It will make changes like the telephone, networks, e-mail and the Internet did. Only more so because it is starting where those all left off. Not a bad head start.
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A key point to remember is that it starts offline first. If you cannot do it offline I am not sure that you can build anything.
I think that is very, very true and central to my point. Thanks. This is not just about changing the way you act on-line, it’s about changing the way you act period. I think this is why the wall of resistance is so high and why the approach of many social media practitioners fails. I think you need to look at institutional personality on and off-line, before you can begin to understand how it would/should manifest itself in a social media context. We do a lot of work with governments and NGOs and it is consistent that their institutional personas rule the day, and in effect present the biggest challenge, as well as the biggest opportunities. I told this to a client one day and she asked why. I likened it to a tall elegant woman who always came to the same cocktail party, but never said anything. If that woman (in my analogy she is the conservative institution who is silent on line) starts to speak she will get a lot of attention. And so it is with institutions. The silent ones, the conservative ones, have a lot to gain by speaking up. Far more than they probably have to lose, so long as they do it right.