Our Blog
Mitch Joel posted a thoughtful blog this week about the role of conversation in social media. You can read it here. I suggest you do. I’ll wait for you right here.
Welcome back (Mom and my other seven readers, at least!). It’s hard for me to disagree with Mr. Joel’s thesis: namely, that most social media postings are one-way broadcasts, rather than elements of two-way communication. And no, this isn’t another tactical admonition not to post your phone number in your updated Linked In status. Rather, Mr. Joel has me thinking bigger.
If you follow my blog at all, you’ll notice that I get about one comment every six months (except for a steady stream of SPAM-generated comments—I appear to have many fans from the Viagra and assorted Canadian pharmaceutical Web sites). That’s ok, though. I’m not looking to rival Google’s traffic with this blog.
You may have already deduced that this blog is intended to let folks interested in me or my little business see how I think, and get a feel for my approach to marketing communications. That’s all. But when it comes to the blogs I follow, Twitter (follow me at @BrianRieger if you’re into that sort of thing), and even Facebook and Linked In, I see a pattern that falls in line with the aforementioned discussion. Broadcast, and lots of it. I’m guilty as well. When I post to Twitter, I generally offer up “re-tweets,” news stories of interest to my market and the like. I don’t engage in many conversations there. It’s just not easy. Having a conversation on Twitter is logistically like reading a book with a sentence on every other page, and not in sequential order.
The bigger point, I think, is social. I was recently directed to a blog comment discussion that proceeded with much passion and volume over a point of contention. Only it wasn’t a conversation. In my world, a conversation involves talking and listening…or, in the case of a blog, typing, reading, ingesting/synthesizing. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. I’m starting to think this is symptomatic of a bigger social shift.
Maybe I’ve discussed this before. But we ain’t listening. We’re becoming a shout-down, discredit-the-opponent kind of society, even on the most trivial or minor points of contention. I don’t blame the blog, or the Tweet for this. I blame us. And I’m certainly doing my fair share of broadcasting. I will at this point type the obligatory request for feedback. But I’m not expecting it. However, this is something for all of us to think about.
Are our business conversations just one-way blogs as well? When we talk to our significant others, are we just taking up air and space with one-way Tweets? Something to think about, I expect…