Never Fall In Love With the Medium

I think a lot of us overly emphasize the technology over the actual goal at hand. How many new photographers out there are focusing on lenses and the model of the camera over what they intend to do with it… 

I think along these lines every time I hear something like “blogging is dead!” Two reasons: 1. It typically isn’t. Most media formats (like matter) can not be destroyed, they only have more or less of the market share at a given time, and 2. It wouldn’t matter if it was, because the stories told via blogging would find a new format to be told in. 

Both of these are reasons not to chain yourself to a specific medium. Great thinking, Chris.

Rooting deeper into what you are saying, what is the bed rock of memory?

When you reflect / play that old casette tape, with ding dong chocolate and hashesh resine stains, what traces of your most joyoious nights magically reemerge ?

The smells, the warm glowing sensations, the midnight at 7 11 minaguiries?

Connection is the word !!

We may have detaiched one imbelical cord but subconsciously we’ve re-ataching and dangling like astronaught ever since

Well I have taken on the Great Pinterest experiment of 2012 to determine if it is all it is cracked up to be.
I still have a cassette player in my car and somewhere I have some old 8 track cassettes too. Guess I am not much of an early adopter. ;)

If the medium keeps changing I’m going to run out of passwords. 

Chris, man, spot on.

The medium is a tool. The foundation is people. You connect with people in a zillion different ways, from carrier pigeon, to the phone, to Facebook, to face to face chats.

Mediums change. Fundamentals do not. Stick to the basics, and use whatever tools you can choose to open communicative channels.

Thanks Chris!

Ryan

Yes, yes, yes. Can’t tell you how many times a client has come to us, eyes alight with visions of the latest shiny penny, demanding to know what our Twitter/Foursquare/Pinterest strategy is. To which we usually respond, “What’s our communication strategy and in what ways do those platforms play a role?”

Sometimes they listen. Other times, not so much. And the lemming-like race to the shiny and new continues…

The great thing about social media is the social. We all want to relate to others, learn from others and give to others. It doesn’t matter where it occurs.

I believe a lot of us have trouble with this.  My favorite phrase was “if it ain’t broken don’t fix it.”  It was until I figured out that I was being left behind.  After an attitude adjustment I can’t wait until the next big new thing comes out.
However, I have also learned not to jump completely off the bridge until I have heard from the likes of Chris Brogan and others I follow.  Thanks again Chris.  Looking forward to the next Shhhhh the Secret Show.

You betcha, I’m in!

The irony is that regardless of the medium, you are having to teach people what is not actually new at all but very old school…coming back full circle to old fashioned business values, supported by the integrity of the business owner’s reputation, the quality of his or her service, and sealed with a handshake. Know, Like and Trust? I don’t think my grandfather, who was born in 1879, would have found that a new idea at all.

Thank you, Chris, for bringing us back where we belong.

Great article. When I talk to people about social media, I like to ask them to picture Facebook and Twitter disappearing tomorrow, and then go back to the point or question we were discussing. Remove the tool or medium from the equation and the good stuff should still remain. On a totally different note, my kids are so confused by VHS, “Why does it have to rewind? Why does it take so long?”. :)

Sucha simple and perfect reminder. I love all the comments about “strategy”, too (and by “love” I mean “LOL’d at”). I saw The Oatmeal at a conference last week where he said something close to, “Don’t ask for Likes… Make something likable.”. Seems like that would apply universally when the specific media strategy questions emerge, as in “Pinterest strategy? Make something worth pinning” (pin worthy?) Twitter strategy? Make something people naturally want to tweet about. Facebook? Etc. Though even this does not capture what I believe is an even simpler yet much more effective “strategy”: take everything you want for yourself and ask how you could do it for users. What if you thought of your users as people who want others to follow THEM? How are you helping your users get more Facebook fans or Twitter followers? How can you help your users get more people to follow what THEY do on Pinterest? We keep making it all about US US US. When has that ever truly been a sustainable path?

Even the advice about “if you want them to talk, give them something to talk (tweet, post, pin) about!” seems flawed in the same way, because most mean it as “…something ABOUT US to talk about…” when we could trust that if we give people deeper, richer experiences and capabilities, they will share those as a natural side-effect. I keep studying areas where people naturally, organically, voluntarily talk/post/review/rave about something, and how often it is about something THEY did (or someone they care about) vs. this TOTALLY AWESOME THING some brand did. Our Pinterest strategy (I have no frickin’ clue what that means) should be helping our users do/make pinable things. At the least, it is a powerful thought experiment. Regardless of what their product or service is.

I am growing so weary of the overwhelming brand and self-promotion on social media. I would so love to see a higher-level strategy that makes things, as Hugh and others put it, that function as “social objects”, rather than trying to make our brand itself a social object. Because nobody, ever, on their deathbed is going to wish they’d spent more time “engaging with brands”. And best of all, with that strategy, then the medium becomes so much less significant. Better to fall in love with “making our users’ lives better”.