Social media… it’s just getting started

Posted on June 21, 2009 by Tom

This weekend in a pub in Ostend, I’m having a beer with some friend and I’m trying to explain them the concept of social media for the umpteenth time.  I mean, it’s wonderfull that they show an interest, but the fact that they keep asking what’s it all about shows how far we are from web 2.0.

It’s hard for people who frequently use social media to understand this.  What so difficult about “Say what you are doing in 140 characters”?  It’s no rocketscience, you don’t have to browse through an 800-page manual to get started.  This should be easy!  I don’t expect my mom to understand what Twitter is all about.  God knows, if I try to explain, she’d probably tell me “I have to do something constructive with my life!”  But surely other marketers should know what it’s all about?

But then again, they aren’t asking what it is, but why it is?  Why should I tell people what I’m doing?  Why should I write a blog?  Why should I connect to people I haven’t even met in real life?  What’s the point?  We are professional idiots.  As soon as a new application is released we try to see some value in it, we don’t ask that why-question anymore because we already made the decision for ourselves that we understand what it’s all about and why it’s useful for us. 

We constantly try to answer the wrong questions.  And they can’t help it, because they don’t know what questions to ask.  Instead of trying to explain what it is or how easy it is to use, we should still tell them what the advantages are, the basics.  They’ll figure out for themselves what applications they can use, they don’t need a bunch of overexcited geeks like us to do that.

You may want to read:

• Accountability for our online behaviour
• Social media or the power of numbers
• Social media, in it for the long run