When Social Media Quantity Increases, Quality Suffers
December 31st, 2008 by Greg Venne
I try to stick with my New Year’s resolutions. So I‘m going to start blogging. I committed to begin in 2008. It’s December 31. Tweeting? Maybe next year.
What to blog on? Blogging and social media seem a good place to start.
I have been in communications for decades, and while I agree that the medium is the message – for day to day survival and the functioning of life and business, content needs to come into the equation. And that is my concern. “My haircut sucks” “Carr’s (Howie) an idiot” “Stuck in traffic” “Soup too hot” are nice things to know, but…… Today’s media of choice – whether it’s Twitter, e-mail or text messaging have ratcheted down the quality of content. I’m as much to blame as anyone – my life, work and relationships depend on e-mail, a laptop and a mobile phone. But when the medium drives the message (the way it is framed, its length, focus, words chosen, speed of delivery, frequency and level of intrusion) to such an extent, I think the value is diminished — to the point of being ignored. Too much can be too much.
As communications professionals, we sell social media as a route to achieve our clients’ business goals – and generate awareness, usually as much as possible. Spin used to mean putting the best face on a situation (yes, sometimes, the lipstick on a pig) and providing information that was useful and addressed an issue or situation – and that reached people and created understanding and grew business. With social media, churn has replaced the spin. The more churn the better. The louder, more frequent and distracting the better. The more data the better. The more clicks the better. The more friends the better.
What to do? One suggestion is talking. Pick up the phone and speak directly with someone (it is difficult no doubt, and requires many tries, but the result will generally exceed that of all tweets, MySpace visits, text messages and e-mails combined). Another suggestion, write something with meaning and substance to other people – not just a text to your friends, family and members of your LinkedIn network. This is especially important to communications professionals. This is our job. Our thinking and writing is shrinking – it’s divided, segmented, fragmented to serve new media. It is in jeopardy of having no meaning at all — much less the intended affect.
One-to-one is an effective form of communications, perhaps the most. I have no doubt. What social media and other recent technology have done is establish communication from one to one but also from one to too many (many of whom really don’t care or worse yet don’t even notice).
No matter. Marshall McLuhan (even writing in the 1960s) was right when he postulated the medium is the message. What would he have made of Twitter?
This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 31st, 2008 at 11:27 am and is filed under Blogging, Media Relations, online communities, PR, Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
