Social media is difficult like intimacy

I completely understand where you’re coming from! I have actually been trying to get my friend to start a blog for the longest time now because it would totally help her with her career. She wants to go into the entertainment/fashion business.

When I talk to her, she asks me what the point of blogging is and where the money is. It’s funny that it all comes down to money, and how most people don’t realize that blogging isn’t primarily about making money. It’s about build your personal brand, sharing your thoughts, and meeting some amazing people online.

Rebecca, you and I disagree on A LOT of topics, and yet, I can say that we’re still friends. If you do manage to make your way over here to LA, I would love to get together for some coffee.

Absolutely love your posts, and I look forward to reading more great stuff!

– Jun

Very good post (as usual). I just had a conversation yesterday regarding nonprofits and social media. Someone said, “Yeah, we want to use these tools, but how can we make sure we still control the message? How can we really tell what’s out there?”

And I told them you can’t. To ignore the organic nature of all this or to try to control your message defeats the point. If you want people to talk about you, you’ve got to let them really talk about you.

I woke up and I’m just glad that you are posting again! You hit it right on the head. I got into Atlanta last night and the friend we are staying with says, so what the hell do you do?

Its hard to answer and explain, yet so easy at the same time. Social Media isn’t about the money, its about the connections and the building of a network that is bigger than you. The people that commented this morning get it.

“Blogging is one of the most valuable and intimate forms of social media that exists. It’s akin to writing love letters back in the day. It’s not as good as spooning your girlfriend, but it works.”

Thanks for reminding me that I am not alone :-)

Rebecca, blogging is “home.” Everything is what you participate in outside of your “home.” For instance, you can’t own Twitter or Facebook, but you can own your on blog. It’s like buying real estate vs renting out someone elses pad.

This might have to turn into a blog post!

Welcome back! Great blog! Stop leaving us for so long! :)

There is a distinct trait of Penelope Trunk in this post, Rebecca. Yet you said it ever so reservedly and beautifully in the true Midwesterner fashion, whereas Penelope’s language would make me blush like getting caught reading porn story…

Maybe peach should have been the state fruit of Wisconsin after all: soft and sweet on the outside, hard and impenetrable on the inside — it’s at the core of our social norm. Though in all seriousness, who’d read an up-close and personal blog if it’s not full of drama and suspense and choreographed with the caliber of a Broadway production? Those of us who can’t or won’t blog this way have to brand ourselves as experts of something or another, not as our bare selves. Before long, we start to live in a one-dimensional persona that’s expected upon us.

You see, I can’t and won’t turn this dialog into a blog on my website. My casually maintained blog has a [vague and uncertain] style to upkeep — albeit vainly and for no audience whatsoever — and this dialog doesn’t sound like “me”, even though it’s just as real and perchance more complex. Does this mean that I have intimacy issue? Sure — and I default to my lame excuse of being an engineering egghead.

I won’t say whether or not you are doing fine. Times are different: Fifty years ago the majority population might call you “ahead of your time”; twenty years ago you’d still be “forward thinking”; today’s expectation would say that you have intimacy issue. I say, “Do you care what other people think?”

PS: Love your blog, as always!

@ Gene – I love your comment. You should make that comment a blog post! Lots there. I do consider myself a Midwestern girl through and through and am quite proud of it. I think you have an interesting perspective of people who brand themselves into a corner on their blogs. You’re absolutely right that blogs that don’t share some sort of personal or people side aren’t successful. Anyway, thank you for such a great comment.

@ Jessica – what?! Jessica! Keep it clean! ;)

@Kiersten – Glad I could help (and isn’t Jessica hilarious?). Funny you mention your resume and interviews. I strongly believe that my blog had a lot to do with me getting my current position. And in one of the three interviews I had to go through to get it, I actually quoted my blog – ha! Thanks for the nice comment!

Nice post Rebecca. People my age are definitely surprised that I blog and wonder where I find the time, mostly. Somehow they equate blogging with painful, ie, ittakesalongtime, writing. I started it as a creative outlet, but along the way have been surprised at the business it has brought our way, and the new communication channels it seems to have opened with employees if not their friends. One of our employees came up and said she had not read my blog but her mother did, and how impressed she was about it. I think many times, we don’t know the extent of our conversations and our modeled behavior.
keep em coming.
gl

I am re-visiting this post 1.) because I enjoyed it so much 2.) there’s some great conversation going on here and 3.) Dan Schawbel is just now getting around to sharing it in google feed reader.

I think this conversation serves as a great example of why blogging is so important to all of us, and how it impacts our lives. I know Dan, Greg, Holly, Jun, Sam, Monica & Jessica all because of blogging.

I also know that these are all valuable connections that are going to “kill it” one day. To take Holly’s comment a step further, the honesty and openness and the connections they all lead to another valuable currency for bloggers: collaboration.

A friend and I were casually comparing our linkedIn contacts the other day and we had very similar numbers, but my network connected to 2.5 million people and his to like 600,000. It’s because I’m out there leveraging my blog to forge relationships with people that “get it” and that are going to impact that world for the better. I’m proud of that!

And thanks for some of the suggestions on my feed reader post Rebecca!

So someone asked me: “What the f**k is a blog?” (Sorry for the profanity)
Just like that! In those words and in a harsh, misunderstanding tone.

It really is difficult to explain it when someone has never participated in the medium in any way, shape or form. But we tried and we made “some” progress together.

Dan Schawbel made a good point above, what some (if not most) people fail to realize is that it’s free to participate. There’s a company floating around out here in Los Angeles, CA that is charging people $79 to create and “optimize” their Facebook & Myspace Profiles, or $50 to create an account on a social network (HELLLLOOO??? The social network is free to join!). Can you believe that??

The other reason people are so hesitant is that they don’t see the value or they question the results. Through my own personal experience, I can attest to the fact that the results are “real” and they are “tangible.” They’ll undoubtedly vary from person to person. But they’re real and tangible. I’ve created business relationships and forged real friendships that otherwise would not have come to fruition had I not participated in social media. So with that, I’m here to stay :-)

Learning so much through the process and meeting so many wonderful minds and fresh ideas. Very worth each minute and writing process. Thank yo for posting!

One Love

“If you do not participate, you are not a part of social media. You’re last year’s season. Obsolete. Outdated. Old-fashioned. And oh-so entrenched in traditional media. ”

Let’s not over state things here. Don’t get me wrong, I “participate,” seems like more every day (case in point- this is my first comment here :-). But ecstasy was big a few years back and I didn’t partake in that.

Social media is important, it connects people and ideas, and allows for big things to happen that weren’t possible before, just look at Dean’s campaign in ’04 and Obama’s campaign now. I have great respect for those who, like you, are out there and not just participating, but driving.

But obsolete and outdated? A bit hyperbolic. It used to be that rhetoric and persuasion were to be admired- sometimes picking up the phone or talking face-to-face also makes big things happen quickly.

I am on Facebook and I own two blogs. But I would not say that those who aren’t doing this are outdated. In fact, I’m somewhat upset over the fact that my close friends send me messages on Facebook, rather than pick up the phone to give me a call.

Hey Rebecca,

This is my first time reading your blog and I thought it was a great post! Too many people are to quick to judge Social Media as a waste of time, or just a trend, without ever even trying it. A lot of companies only care about ROI and to them, Social Media just doesn’t click in their heads. However, they will soon wake up and realize that they’ve been left in the dust by their competitors (who have integrated a strategic Social Media plan) and have lost a big chunk of their market share to them.

I’m a boomer (born at the end of the generation’s time span) and so it’s kind of understandable that it would be difficult for me to accept the whole social media thing. Althougth, I do have a twitter account and a LinkedIn account; because of the nature of my business. I’m in PR and my clients’ target audiences are getting younger, not older so I have to know how to reach the younger generation.

However, there is many a day when I dream of the time when you could leave home with only a dime to make a phone call in an emergency. When you could leave home without worrying about somebody trying to reach you. I have two cell phones: personal and for work and there are many times when I wish I could just junk them. Instead, on Friday evenings I cut the blackberry off until Sunday night.

So I say to the Generation Y’ers, “Get off the Stick”; blog, twitter, facebook it, whatever. If I can test the social media waters, there is no reason why you can’t.

Very enjoyable read.. Thanks for sharing..

Well…no.

Here’s the problem with blogging, unless it’s an outgrowth of, say, scholarly or scientific work, or even a serious hobby: It’s incredibly shallow and repetitive. You get four billion people who’re experts on themselves, and don’t find it necessary to communicate about much else. It’s not, as they say, a knowledge set with broad application.

Worse, blog etiquette tends to stifle the sort of discussion and collaboration that really makes things pop. The usual etiquette is that you have one queen bee posting away; she develops her own ideas at length. Commenters are expected to briefly admire, or, at a minimum, dissent very politely while agreeing in substance and telling the blogger how terrific she and her blog are. Non-sycophants are encouraged to leave. A commenter who routinely attacks the blogger’s position is usually attacked personally by several regular commenters and told to go start his own blog, so others who agree with him can read him there. Whether or not such dissent crops up, threads die almost as soon as they’re born, and the conversation suffers from ADD.

Contrast with USENET, which was the main net-based conversation source through much of the 90s. Groups were not owned by anyone, so if you wanted the respect of your peers, you had to earn it by posting acute, insightful, non-jejune (look it up) remarks and responses to other people’s remarks. You could expect serious debate and idea development, and respect for intellectual rigor and fair play. Sycophants didn’t live long. If a topic was of lasting interest, the threads would grow enormous, split, and get archived; newcomers could be referred to them. Communities grew up around maintaining the groups. Maybe most important: Individual voices came through loud and clear, but the topic was not particular individuals. The topics were consistently more interesting than that. Fruitful real-life relationships sprang up and were maintained.

The people who make things go are not the ones who devote their best energies to their blogs. Or the ones who spend hours crafting blog posts that are just right. What that means is that, for the most part, blogs really are “just blogs” — a place to connect with a few people (which is what most blog audiences come down to), a place to try out ideas in a less-than-professional way. When they’re written by very smart people, particularly on subjects other than themselves, they’re occasionally citable. But that’s about the extent of it, I think. It’s talk in a very small room.

Don’t underestimate the utility of sticking to “outdated, obsolete” media, by the way, particularly ones that involve significant thought, quiet, and time. The people who do that tend to know and understand more than the people who spend most of their time on superficial conversation. It isn’t enough to make a network, in other words; you have to have something worthwhile to use it for. Odds are talking about yourself ain’t it.

I actually don’t think that people who aren’t participating in social media are missing anything. I’ve blogged on and off for about a year, and the only conclusion I’m coming to is that there a lot of vain, egotisic people out there.

So much so, that I’m beginning to not want to blog anymore.

I think it’s great if people are finding some legitimate connections out there, but the only thing I’ve found is a bunch of people that feel protected by the confines of their computer to write whatever they want to write…for better or worse. For people or for status.

So, that’s great if you’ve found some good in social media, but I really don’t think that means everyone else is “last season” or something.

I couldn’t agree more. Sometimes I wonder what’s taking people so long to catch up. I don’t mind reading blogs which are mostly written by people I don’t know, but I’m definitely more curious to read what my friends and family think about issues and day-to-day life.

But they have no idea what I mean when I talk about Twitter or blogging. I try to explain and even offer to get them started, but most people just don’t get it. And sometimes they’re mean about it because they don’t get it.

These people (and companies) are definitely missing out on a lot.