Don't forget the "social" in Social Media

by Stephanie Weg

Let’s play a little mind game. Imagine it is the year 1991. 

You are walking down the road, on your way to the local shops. As you cross the street, you see a woman standing at the corner, telling people about her experience with  different cosmetics products she uses. 

A few minutes later, you encounter a teenager on a bench, talking to no one in particular about what he had for breakfast today. A stranger walks up to you, hands you her business card and asks you whether you’d like to stay in touch. Confused, you decline, wondering why everyone today is talking about stuff you did not ask for.

In case you have not guessed it yet: This was Social Media warped back to 1991. Ms. Blog, Mr. Twitter and Mrs. Facebook just provided you with the sort of information found in the Social Web today. It feels strange: Back then, no one would have thought about socialising in these ways which are a normal part of everyone’s life today.

This takes us to the point of this article, the social aspect of Socia Media: Social Media provides tools to take good, old fashioned interactions online. The purpose it to enhance existing or needed interactions, not to make people interact in ways that don’t add value. 

Let’s look at a few examples:

Introductions on professional networking platforms are a great example of social Media. They enhance the traditional business networking by making it more transparent (show my 2^nd level connections), more convenient and by helping us to remember who on earth Mr. X was again. 

Connecting with strangers without a reason, however, is less social. Yes, you will have a huge network and lots of friends, but this will also generate a lot of noise in your input stream and when someone asks you to introduce them to Mr. Smith, you have to admit that you don’t actually know him well enough to do that. 

Discussing products, specific topics or making recommendations online is faster and gives you more reach than the chats one used to have with small groups of friends. Now, you can get a lot more information from people you trust in a shorter period of time: this is social Media at it’s best.

Tweeting one’s daily routine (assuming you are no celebrity) or blogging about a topic no one is interested in, however, is not Social Media, but individual Media. It is like writing an online diary, which might be enjoyable for the author, but actually sparks very little social interaction. 

And the lessons learned...?

...are simple: If you use Social Media, think about how you can enhance social interaction. Successful Social Media campaigns provide content that sparks social interaction and thrives on people finding value in the exchange that is facilitated. It achieves engagement by emulating social interaction your audience seeks, and through this becomes truly social ...Media.  

Images: renjith krishnan and jscreationzs / FreeDigitalPhotos.net