Playing In Traffic - Social Media Ain't for Unreconstructed Old Print Folks

We social media pros know that communicating through blogs, podcasts, message/bulletin boards is analogous to playing in traffic.  Most of us started getting used to the still-untamed dynamics of the Internet way back in 1999.  Fortunately, most of us didn't know the wild ride we were in for.

I was all web-innocence when I took a course "Writing for the Internet" back then at the New School University.  The big issue in class was to find ways to limit the number of click-throughs your web readers would have to accomplish. 

Seven years later I am still standing, but plenty bloodied.

The underemployed Generations X and Y who hang out on the bulletin boards of mediabistro.com had the time and interest to tell me via 100 postings that they didn't like my tone.  Lesson learned: Don't use that top-down tone again and steer clear of bulletin boards filled with underemployed Generations X and Y.   Rightly, a reader of my blog commented that my posting on Liza M was ill-thought-out.  It was.  I deleted it.  I am still trying to think through what I want to say about her.  I started a second blog that was DOA.  Maybe the first time's a charm.  Freaked out by this unexpected failure, I'm almost phobic about adding another blog.

Of course, the benefits outweigh the trauma.  Thanks to this blog new business keeps coming in w/o heavy lifting.  Name recognition has soared.  And in 15 months of blogging I have totally reconfigured my network from geezer print folk to digital power-brokers.

No fools, the lion's share of communicators and their clients want to get out there, big time, on the web.  Slow down my pretty, I advise them.  Take this in baby steps. 

"What can I read," they ask me.

"Learning to navigate social media is like learning to drive.  You get out there and buck the traffic.  But stay off the freeways until you build up experience."  That's my reply.

Mostly, they're not listening.  A flood of books such as "Naked Conversations" by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel have hit the market.  The old print people and their clients scoop up these books and feel okay about things.  They shouldn't.  But they do and will continue to do that.

Look forward to plenty of road kill.  The speed associated with social media requires specialized skills.  Those skills only come from hands-on experience.

Comments

[Nicole]

Excellent resource you\'ve got here!!! Will definately be back!!!l

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[Stive Angelo]

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And give URL of your site. Snxs.

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Life begins at conception, begins at birth - Or come up with another stage and develop a different persuasive speech topic

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I can't be bothered with anything lately, but that's how it is. Nothing seems important, but what can I say? Shrug.

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I like that!

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[Tish Grier]

Hi Jane...came this way from a link on Dan Gillmor's blog...

you've got one aspect of social media, but here's a bit more: online communication is hard for anyone just getting into it, not just media people. I've been knocking around various forms of social software for the past 8 years--forums, newsgroups, chatrooms, online dating and blogs--and in some places it's easy to interact, in others it isn't.

it's about community--and sometimes it takes awhile to know the community's lingo and power-structure. It takes awhile, too, to get used to not having body language and lacking vocal inflection Which then makes emoticons, for some of us, very important :-)

oh, and I wrote a piece giving some solutions for journalists about interacting for Online Journalism Review just recently:

http://www.ojr.org/ojr/stories/060612grier/

but some of the info's pretty good for anyone who gets a comment on his/her blog and is totally confused about what to do about it.

Tish G.