You can’t just walk into the middle of any conversation and know what is going on -- especially if it’s a conversation between people you don’t know from an unfamiliar culture. The best thing to do is to observe. But for some people, the hardest thing about social media is shutting up long enough to learn. As in so many situations in life, you need to listen before you speak.
Every day I run into people who tell me that they want me to help them start a blog. Or help them use Twitter. Or show them how to upload to YouTube. And I usually try to talk them out of it, because they are doing social media just to do it. In fact, they are entering an unfamiliar community. And just as with any community, you need to understand the culture before you can be accepted.
Many of us aren't so big on listening or learning, we just want to get started. Specifically, to start talking, start marketing, and get our message out there. We want to treat social media as just one more piece of real estate for us to plaster our virtual billboards. Try as we might, that approach just won’t work.
Think about what it’s like for a missionary to land in a new village. He could walk into the center of the village and yell, "Church services in the big hut at 10 a.m. on Sunday and if you don’t go you are all going to hell!" But he doesn’t, because the last guy who did that became a martyr a bit earlier than he expected.
Instead, he looks around to find a need, such as fresh water, and he shows the villagers how to dig a well. And he continues to listen to their problems and try to solve them. Eventually, they are sure to ask him why he came here and why he is performing all these selfless acts, and he’ll then have his chance to tell them.
Social media is similar. If you start by listening and trying to be helpful to the existing community, you’ll make friends who will eventually want to listen to your marketing message. You can use conversation-mining tools or free Google Alerts, but the result is the same: You must listen to what’s being said before you’ll be ready to engage.
And notice that I said engage, not talk. Even after listening, you don’t just spew your message like someone impatiently waiting for an opening in the conversation to inject a point. That’s not real conversation, and it won’t be relational or persuasive. Instead, you must truly interact with the community, which will sometimes be uncomfortable, but is the best route to being listened to.
If you talk, you might be heard, but to be persuasive, you must be listened to. When marketers begin working in social media, they must first listen and then engage so that when they do speak, the message lands.
— Mike Moran, author of Do It Wrong Quickly, is a speaker and consultant on Internet marketing.
I have heard many others tell me the same thing, Amy. I wonder if some social network might be smart enough to allow people to limit their messages to certain segments of their friends, so that they can just label people as being friend or family or work and then label their updates as to how many of those groups they want to see it. Maybe that would be too complicated for some, so it would be optional to use the feature, but it would make stuff easier to people like you who are juggling multiple services instead.
Mike, I would suggest there is nothing wrong with steering work-y requests to connect to a work-y social network, like LinkedIn. And thus preserving Facebook or Twitter for social purposes. Or setting up a work-oriented Twitter feed, then a friend-oriented one. Or creating the combo that suits you best.
I turned down a business acquaintance who wanted to friend me on Facebook for the first time the other day, explaining to him that I nattered on to my friends about movies or my kid's shoe size or whatever on FB, and couldn't we "hang out" in LinkedIn instead? He seemed fine with it and accepted the LinkedIn invite I sent him. I plan to do this more when the really clear-cut colleague-not-friend scenarios arise. (The folks who are both friend and colleague, I will probably just continue to cave :-)
When I was new to FB, and friendless at that, I accepted friend requests from work colleagues. Now I wish I could undo them, but it feels like too much time has elapsed.
As has been said before, social media is in its infancy.
As such, some of us just observe the kids at play, and have no wish to spend our time commenting on trivia. Blogging just to blog strikes me as narcissistic, at the very least.
That said, there are some good commentators out there - the problem is finding them. Kinda like a good Web page, you have to wade through thousand of pieces of drek to find thoughtful design.
But it does exist, so I keep looking, and writing encouragement when I find good stuff.
Does that make me an egotist? Maybe. But I rarely blog myself, preferring to comment / blog only when I can add meaningful comment to the mix.
I go back and forth on this because you have to realize that the number of newcomers will exponentially outweigh the existing members.
And so, the upstarts may ask "by what right do you control this Commons"...and have a point.
Look, all the efforts in CBT demostrate that people want to start an application up and start using it, even at a dumb level...and so we have FAQs, Hello Worlds and Getting Starteds.
The thing about social media, unlike a living room, or park bench is that you can set filters. This is why I miss Usenet (nntp protocol) because you could have sophisticated browser clients that let you score "authors" based on your desire to read them (among many other types of scoring).
This newcomer effect is often a source of "Troll Labelling". Someone bursts in and starts asking questions that don't sit well with the established members and they label the person a Troll - he who wishes to get as many responses as possible by espousing the most inflammatory of opinions.
I have tried to counter-meme this by defining the Internet Barnacle:
defn: A Barnacle is a person who haunts Usenet Newsgroups, Bulletin Boards and Fora. They offer a narrow interpretation of the purpose of the board, sometimes bordering on the absurd, or do to their own misinterpretation of the original charter.
ChrisTOP, I guess it is quite important issue, why do people use social networks and blogs. I guess the reasons are different. Social networks are for saying something to people you (anyhow but )know.Blogging is about saying something to everybody.
I think very often it is about who you are, and how you say, not what you say...You know, sometimes a person says almost nothing important but the way he/she says is so delightful that we are ready to read this nonsense
I know that it might be a bit different for me Mashka, but I think it's only a difference of degree. Maybe you can argue that I am a public person, but it's not like I am famous. I've struggled with whether accepting all friend requests is a good idea or not. And the thing that I am wondering about is that we are all somewhat public persons when we engage in social media. Perhaps someone has seen things that you say and likes them, so wants to friend you, even they don't really know you. I agree with you that there are some folks that show off friend lists the same way teenagers brag about how many people signed their yearbook. We'll see if that continues--my bet is that it won't and I'm sure you'll be happy about that. So will I.
My perspective on most social networking is that it is not about what's being said, or even simply saying it. Social networking provides a sort of fantasy for the user, where they can imagine that people are coming to their blog to hang on its every word. In this way, they can have a modicum of celebrity just by talking about themselves, or so they think.
Personally, I think people need to realize that they are not all that interesting. Blog culture is evolving, and in order to stay on top of things you need to offer people more than "I do this, I do that." That may be fine for someone with actual celebrity status, but the average blogger is not perceived as special, and therefore must work a bit harder for an audience.
This is quite true... and the fact that it is pretty much pervasive of the whole social media phenomenon, tells me that it's human nature to want to be heard, to be acknowledged. The tricky part is making sure your contribution is relevant, and appreciated. Social media makes it much easier to throw one's words out to total strangers, whose words and faces we see on a daily basis somehow make them seem more intimate than they really are. A glib comment that may elicit chuckles of amusement or nods of approval from one's true peers, or even stimulate an intelligent discussion, often lead to lashing rage and hateful denunciations when strewn before people who do not know us.
I often feel the need to comment on something interesting, but lately, what I do, is to enter my comment, then leave it, and not submit it, to give myself a moment to think "Will my comment add something to the discussion? Can this be misinterpreted? If I'm attempting humor, is this something generally funny, or is it an 'inside joke' that may alienate others?" If I can't satisfactorily answer those questions, then I just let those words languish and dry up like a dead leaf to be blown away in the breeze. And still I find that no matter what you say, someone, somewhere, will find something to be upset about...
Mike, you are a public person, it is different thing.People most likely read your books, visit your lectures or read your blog. I am talking about people for whom social media is another consuming space.They can;t drive expensive cars here, they can't wear Armani, they just can have 5000 friends
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