It’s the ‘Social’ in Social Media that Cannot be Ignored
Within this environment it’s almost heretical to question social media, but scratch beneath the surface with many marketers and it’s not uncommon to find a degree of perplexed disenchantment and scepticism, especially amongst older, more senior (budget holding!) marketers who have yet to embrace social media in their private lives and thereby see what all the fuss is about. Chances are that most Change Agent readers have had such discussions already, regardless of what side of the social media fence you sit.
Social media doubters are hardly helped by much of the social media commentary that they find. The majority of the conversation is focussed on unquestioningly embracing social media within business, and the important differentiation between old-school one-way marketing campaigns and truly integrating social media into a company’s fabric. In other words, the “how to” aspects of social media.
Much harder to find is the answer as to why social media has taken off. Seek answers to this question and the responses are a predictably rational set of reasons – “it’s fun”; “I can chat with my friends”; “I can see what others thought of this product”; “everyone else is doing it” and so on.
But these reasons fail to answer the big question – because everything we do within social media was already being done offline, doubters can be excused for questioning how socialising via websites could possibly be better than traditional offline methods. Surely face-to-face is better than screen–to-screen?
This is where the statisticians are best replaced by sociologists and anthropologists, who are increasingly found within market research companies as much as within university departments. It may seem like stating the obvious when such people point out that we are a social animal, but this key point has been missing from most social media discussion and is worth highlighting here.
Consider for a moment how vital it is for people to be a healthily-functioning part of a social group: being sociable and good at socialising are positive traits, being a hermit or a wallflower at a party is negative. Living is generally easier in groups, from the family to the village to the city. Feeling a part of a social group is vital for ones’ self-identity and feeling of self-worth, whether this group is the fan base for a football team or a local macramé club. Scientists have even proven a positive link between a person’s social network quality and lifespan.
Yet it’s not just about numbers. As many may have wryly thought when reading of celebrities holding parties for “a thousand close friends” or seeing people on Facebook with over 600 ‘friends’, it’s the closeness of your friends which is where the real value lies. It is indeed one of the ironies of our busy, urban lives that the average person probably interacts (face-to-face or otherwise) with more acquaintances than in any time previous in history, but finds it harder than ever before to start and sustain true friendships in which deeper emotions and frailties can be shared. Truth be told, most of our social interactions are with people we have little choice but to deal with – neighbours, work colleagues, classmates, church members or sports groups. If you were to move cities tomorrow, how many would you seek out during return trips?
Thus it is that most of our social interactions are not especially deep (and on a practical level, they shouldn’t be anyway!), and nor are they usually held with people we would think of as close friends.
This is where social media works so well – because it removes the barriers of geography and time, enabling people to socialise with the people they choose to, on the topics they choose to, not just the people and subjects that circumstances dictate. Hence a session swapping gossip on Facebook, talking sports on Mapmyride.com, or sharing cooking tips on AllRecipes.com will often be much more appealing than the one-way experience of TV or print media, or dealing with people we’d rather not face (whether or not such ‘editing’ of our social networks is indeed a good thing is debatable; some argue that keeping our interactions restricted just to those whom we like limits new ideas and experiences). But again, human nature gravitates to the easy and the affirmative, and this is where social media truly enhances lives.
It is this humanising aspect of social media that social media heretics need to bear in mind. Social media is not going to go away, and the brands that consumers interact with offline are expected to be online as well – the differentiation between on and offline is becoming irrelevant. As to how one’s brand should behave in the social media space? As a good socialiser of course!