The Internet is People!

My second precept:

I will be conscious of my relationships in the social media environment and remember that there is a real human attached to that avatar.

I’ve already spoken about flame wars so I will not touch on that here. I have a belief that since the population of the web is tired of of what I call shouting, and of the billboards, we need to figure out what will work to drive traffic to our sites. Twitter’s catch is sharing information. Retweets can help topics spread at an incredibly rapid pace. Friendfeed allows for the same kind of sharing and used in conjunction with Twitter it allows you to reach many many more people. By no means am I saying that these two sites are exactly what you need. I am just using these as an example.

What we need to remember is that each one of these avatars we see on these sites are attached to a real individual. On the surface we all know that. However, it is easy to get caught up in the electronics of the whole thing and not really pay attention to the individuals who are right in front of you. Jeremy Floyd wrote in his blog post, Business Seem Overwhelming? Lean Into It, of those times that our business spins out of control. This is caused many times by a loss of focus. This is the time that we need to, as Jeremy puts it, lean into it. Fearlessly take the reigns of control out of the hands of chaos. This loss of focus can happen in social media as well. We need to focus on that which we can accomplish in  the realm of 2.0 and leave the rest. If we continue to manage 20 or 30 accounts that we use various third party services to update the exact same message across the board, we will not keep our focus. Mass updating puts a barrier between us and them. I say scale back the accounts and refocus our efforts into building a base group of relationships.

I think that now is the right time to say, do unto others, as you would have done to you. Yes, the golden rule, passe yet applicable. I believe that we should take the time to think about the type of advertising that impacts us, the kind that we want to hear. Do you want to see a tweet about a product, then see the exact same words on Facebook, and then again on identi.ca? I guess what this rant is really coming down to is, advertise unto others, as you would be advertised to.