The Catalyst for Connection

The term social media has emerged to provide a broad categorization for a collection of unique, Web-based tools for personal expression and communication, including blogs, podcasts, video and photo sharing sites, social networking sites, social bookmarking sites, and the latest social media juggernaut, Twitter.

The rapid evolution and extraordinary popularity of these technologies has not gone unnoticed by marketing professionals. However, the challenge for marketers who wish to make effective use of social media is in recognizing that these technologies do not constitute yet another channel for the same tired message. (Every time I see a press release disguised as a blog post I want to stab myself in the brain with a pencil.)

What makes social media so uniquely powerful as a marketing tool has far less to do with the technology than it does with an entirely different approach to connecting with an audience. That connection is defined by its one-to-one-to-one nature, a cascade of individual, personal connections that stands in contrast to previous perceptions and definitions audience engagement.

Stop Selling – Start Talking

The problem — well, my problem — with “traditional” marketing communication is that it’s so obviously fluffy and phoney and too often absent any signs of humanity. Yet in my experience so many marketing people seem to think that the audience won't notice. The audience notices. The audience has always noticed.



Despite its startling violence, that routine from comedian and social critic Bill Hicks elicited enthusiastic applause in performances in the early Nineties. At about the same time the World Wide Web launched on a trajectory that would do for long-established business and communication models what a very large comet is believed to have done for the dinosaurs.

A few years later the authors of The Cluetrain Manifesto brought into sharp focus the nature of the dysfunctional relationship that had emerged between business and the newly networked consumer in the early days of the Web.

Whether explaining or complaining, joking or serious, the human voice is unmistakably genuine. It can't be faked...Most corporations, on the other hand, only know how to talk in the soothing, humorless monotone of the mission statement, marketing brochure, and your-call-is-important-to-us busy signal. Same old tone, same old lies. No wonder networked markets have no respect for companies unable or unwilling to speak as they do.
- From The Cluetrain Manifesto, 1999

In 2009, despite the explosion in social media, how many businesses have evolved beyond communication that is official, artificial, and superficial? What those business fail to understand is that businesses don’t communicate, people communicate. The use of social media makes old-school faceless, sanitized, “official” communication obsolete. And the issue isn't just about what's being said -- it's about who's doing the talking.

Be a Mensch

A business is a collection of individual people, a kind of techno-organic network within the larger global network. The use of social media tools allows individuals within one network to engage with individuals in other networks on a more personal, and thereby more effective level.

For a business, the power in social media centers on the ability to allow individual audience members to tap into the thought processes of the individual people behind the products or services a company provides. For that reason the conversation that connects a person from within the business to members of the customer community must be a genuine reflection of the legitimate interests and passions of the individuals involved. The pursuit of those interests and passions rarely follows a straight line, and the creative spark that triggers innovation might be wildly off-topic. That's the nature of human conversation. The challenge for the business is to get out of the way of that conversation in order to allow a genuine human connection to form, a connection based on mutual value to the individuals.

Look at these two equations and let me know which one has the most benefit to you?
1. Message 1,000,000 to possibly reach 100
2. Personally reach 100 who influence 1,000 who influence 10,000 who influence 1,000,000.
From Redefining Reach: The New Marketing Equation, by Matt Dickman, 2008

That connection is unlikely to form if the people representing the business in the conversation behave like an under-quota insurance salesman at a cocktail party. You wouldn't want to get stuck talking to that guy, so don't be that guy. Talk shop, talk about projects you're involved in. Share your insight and expertise, but don't abuse your connections, and never, never, never resort to fluff.

Each of us is an individual node in an ever-expanding global network. Social media tools allow us to create and manage our own connections. The level and extent of that personal interconnection is unique in human history, That's a tectonic shift in the business environment, but businesses can survive the resulting tremor if they learn to unleash — and trust — the individual voices within and learn to participate in, rather than attempt to control, the conversation that is the catalyst for that connection.