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Amazing growth in social media understanding

July 8th, 2008 Posted in Building Community, Business Strategy
Post-Its

While us social media nerds might get frustrated that everyone hasn’t seen the light as quickly as we think they should, I’m seeing more and more signs that things are changing for the better.

In many, if not most of my social media strategy sessions, one of the first tasks I ask the group to do is to write down on Post-It notes what they think “social media” means. I ask them to use a single Post-It for a single idea, but to share as many ideas/definitions/concepts as they can in the 1-2 minutes I give them.

Certainly this activity helps me understand the group I’m talking to, but more interestingly it helps me understand where the ideas of social media are at with the non-nerd crowd.

Last week I presented to a client group and, of course, ran this activity. This group was smart, but not necessarily “hip on the social media”. Which is what made their answers so jaw-droppingly impressive. Here’s a sample:

  • People, typically with common interests, interacting with each other online
  • Posting, talking, engaging
  • Interactions to influence thought patterns and responses of a group of individuals
  • Obsessive
  • Media that helps people facilitate conversations, thinking, interaction, understanding
  • User driven electronic communication
  • Places on the web where people go to “see” and be “seen”
  • Huge time consumer
  • Talking/interacting with others on the internet, even if you don’t know them
  • Interest based communities
  • Social clusters
  • People exchanging information
  • Sharing communities
  • Networking with peers
  • Six degrees of separation
  • Whatever you want it to be
  • Interactions & relationships across a vast network without geographic limit

Now if you’re an industry practitioner, this might not seem that impressive. But considering a mere 4-6 months ago I was more likely to hear answers like “blog” and “facebook”, this is a big shift. Like I said back in March, the “innovation” we’re currently seeing take place is “adoption”.


This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 8th, 2008 at 9:33 am and is filed under Building Community, Business Strategy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
  • Beautiful exercise, Jake. Thanks for sharing. I bet that's one that produces breakthroughs a lot, but also gives you a real launching pad for discussion. Love it.
  • The social web is a network of volunteers. Most people even after they have joined social networking groups fail to see the point of being there. They never get engaged enough to find people like themselves, they don't bother to read posts, they don't get to know who the other people are, and they NEVER post themselves.

    To get any benefit out of social networking YOU have to do things yourself. Since this is a choice you make, you have to choose to do more work. Only after making that choice can you discover, people, topics, places where your engagement is a useful addition to your day.

    So those who are very successful in using social media are about 5% of those who choose to participate in the first place. About 15% find some benefit but never get deeply involved. The other 80% are the long tail, "I joined but I never used it much".

    I quote LinkedIn because my numbers there are fairly solid. LinkedIn is the premier business network on the Internet. More than 7000 New Zealanders are members. (LinkedIn told me 10,000 two years ago.) The median number of connections of the people that can be found is 5. BUT fewer than 3000 people are findable, the rest have 0, 1 or 2 connections and effectively absent.

    The "information super-highway" is yet to arrive.
  • Jake, I cannot tell you enough how much I agree and am glad to see this post. Every so-called social media expert out there needs to read it.

    The reality is that "we" (the ones using blogs, twitter, facebook, etc.) are in the extreme minority. I've had more and more conversations with people who are not "in the industry" and the eyes still continue to glaze over even when I talk about blogging.

    "The 'innovation' we're currently seeing take place is 'adoption'." Absolutely goddamn right.
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