I was talking with my leadership at work about BWE and of the questions that got repeated time and time again was exactly what is social media? What does it really do? And perhaps most often, why is it important?
I’ll try to answer the final one of those, and why I see a problem.
At it’s most basic; Social Media is a tool for bringing people together, sharing ideas and thoughts. Now a lot of that (including, I suspect, what I write) is background noise, but there are some really spectacular gems out there.
It’s been given credit for many things; from grand ideals like enabling the protests of Arab spring to allowing us to share rambling thoughts, as long as it’s less than 140 characters.
The Internet really has changed the world we live in, it allows us to connect with people we would be unlikely to find offline. This can be a huge force for good, it brings unlikely communities together, or has the power to lead us down dark little paths, some of which are very well trodden.
It all starts with a small conversation; this builds and builds into something potentially very cool. We all like to belong to groups, we like to feel we belong and that’s a very natural human trait. The Internet allows us to engage in ways unknown 10 years ago, it allows us to follow, to connect for the sake of connection and that is a very, very powerful force.
Anyone can produce content, and this is the power of Social Media. It is an incredible tool to engage and provides a place for everyone that has something to say, to say it.
Lets be clear there are some brilliant, creative people in the blogging and writing business, and until the last decade never had an accessible platform to show their talent.
And this is what social media does, it creates that platform for people to share, educate and connect.
But a lot of social media entrepreneurs business plans are largely based on self-promotion and that’s led to a lousy signal-to-noise ratio. We know that. And in part that’s because so much of what’s shared is just regurgitated, there is precious little great original content.
And that’s leads to what I think is one of the issues, Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
SEO was such a popular topic at BWE; there were multiple sessions devoted to it. And for good reason. This is how Facebook decides what news feeds appear for us. Facebook looks at the conversations we have and decides what fits out history the best. Google does the same thing; the algorithms it uses are very powerful and to some extent Google shows us what Google thinks we want to see. If we have extreme views on one subject, this colours all the results we see to some extent. It puts us into groups, groups that reinforce the way we think.
Why is this a problem?
In places it’s become an insular world of entrepreneurs using social media to reinforce each other’s perceived brilliance. Now there are exceptions, I’ve met some wonderful, creative people, but a lot of it consists of navel gazing and telling each other how awesome it all is.
So how do we get away from this if these gargantuans of the web feed us what they think we want? Where do the original thoughts come from?
There are a number of answers and at least one of them comes from Steve Jobs. I’ve recently finished was Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson, by the way it’s a good read.
One of the things I got from his book was that he believed people should never stop learning something new. Inspiration can be found in many places. Travel, do things you’ve never done, take risks, learn new skills and understand inspiration comes from many, many sources.
If Social Media becomes this self-fulfilling prophecy, if we as a group fail to produce new ideas, then it just becomes millions of people telling each other how wonderful they are.
And that’s not what it is about; social media has shown that the online world has a significant effect on the real world. Look at the Arab Spring; it’s a seismic shift that could not have happened 10 years ago with out this platform.
What Jobs is saying, is that as a group we need the continual injection of new ideas, from wherever they come from. We need genuinely new thoughts and big ideas to keep this dynamic force going.
And that is what social media important. Not followers, re-tweets, SEO, or mentions or monetization strategies.
Just my thoughts.
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17 Comments
Interesting thoughts, it is a challenge to keep up with Googles ever changing algorithms, the Panda update really separated those who understand from those who don’t. There were more changes this week, some substantial.
You seem to think it’s something of a dark future, I don’t think it is. Yes there is a lot of reweeeting and some times original content is in short supply, but there is original writing that does make a difference.
Thanks
Angie, I don’t think the future is dark, I get how you may think that from some of the tone. However I do think that SEO leads us down narrower and narrower paths that reinforce our current thought process. You have to look for a counterview rather than be presented with one.
That’s where it’s going wrong.
It’s just another aspect of the insular world that SEO potentially presents us.
You are right about it potentially becoming an insular community. We do spent time telling each other how creative we all are, but it’s only a few popel that producr really compelling content
BWE was terrific, I learned so much and met so many, take it easy dave.
“SEO.” Search Engine Optimization is vital, and I think you down play it. I think the latest updates are still being worked out by the SEO companies, but it could be that by securing a Google+ Page and creating relevant and interesting content, you are effectively optimizing search without having to create several side-pages just to link back to your content. This is incredibly significant to bloggers and more so moving forward.
A lot of SM is about the platform, and there is also part of the issue. Twitter has just over 100 million monthly active users, and 400 million sign-ups seems unlikely given that it was only 200 million a while back.Facebook has around 850 million monthly active users, and probably over a billion sign-ups.Google+ probably only has 5 or 10 million monthly active users, and probably about 50 million sign-ups.From those numbers Facebook is clearly the most engaging service. G+ is a bigger threat to Twitter than it is to Facebook at this time.
Social networks are platforms for personal connection and dialogue, this has proved challenging for many companies that are not used to speaking to their customers in conversational tones. Companies have established profile, that is one thing, a “brand voice” something new.
This has been a very interesting topic and will continue to be discussed from not to the end of it. I have become a frequent user of Google+ and seen first hand that it is extremely interactive with users, more so than other. It not only has a significant set of features, but the possibilities are limitless for the most part and is only going to get better from here as data is collected.
The “naval gazing” as you so clearly put it does affest the industry and new content is the life blood of what we do.
Thanks for sharing a fun conference, maybe next year.
Any business plan that is based on self-promotion will falter sooner rather than later, you still need to provide value to the consumer. And monitizing that value is still being done through old-media channels, book sales and speaking.
Once someone works out how to make money providing online value it will all change again.
Dave, some interesting thoughts and the “navel gazing” as you put it is the big thing the new-media gurus don’t want to talk about.
Den
Social media is as intimidating as it is encouraging. Not only does it work for customers, but it also empowers businesses to learn from customer sentiment and adapt to their wants and needs. Social media is a window to relevance and the ability to compete for the future, today.
While I still believe that Social is more powerful than ever, I get a little cranky if there’s too much happy social media Kool-Aid swishing around. This is actually a great Ideas that is why social media is important, thanks Dave
Great thoughts Dave – and thanks for the ping back to my post. Glad you felt it was useful.
It is about idea and keeping fresh thoughts flowing
Meeting you and the rest of those I follow was one of the highlights of BlogWorld LA. Also my first one. I had a great time. My only regret was not meeting everyone that I’d hoped to meet.
Thanks for making the effort to make clear the terminlogy to the newbies!
There are certainly a lot of details like that to take into consideration. That is a great point to bring up and I don?t know if best practices have emerged around things like that.
[…] It’s this navel gazing I talked about here. […]