Decoding Social Media – One Relationship at a Time

During a meeting the other day a few people were discussing having been recently invited to their 10-year high school reunion.  One quipped, “With Facebook, what’s the point? I keep in touch with everyone I want to keep in touch with.” Another agreed, “The Gross Point Blank novelty of it is gone completely, plus they want to charge me more than what I paid for prom, which pretty much sucked anyway.” Oh, I think that person was me, any excuse to bring John Cusack into the conversation! Then I remembered flipping through a friend’s flickr slideshow of the event, squealing how the three people I remembered had changed, and feeling a bit sad that I had missed out on seeing (and smirking) in their presence.

A few days later I was having a bit of a tiff with a certain significant other, who protested my pouty demands to just get a text message back (seriously, how much effort does it take boys) with the somewhat mighter-then-thou delivered fact that years ago we would be writing letters to each other, delivered via stagecoach and that just because it is now possible to have instant access to everything, it certainly doesn’t mean that the world works better this way.

He obviously didn’t consider what it is that I do for a living. As the web publicist for Red Door, my job is to pay attention to, well about a million things at once. Managing multiple client accounts, I listen in on the converstation across multiple industries so that I am ready, in the insta-second of a tweet, to respond, research and engage. There simply isn’t time to miss an opportunity to make a connection and, much like high school prom dates, it’s up to me to make the first move.

I like what Anthony Mayfield from iCrossing has to say:

“the social web is not just about media, it’s not just about marketing or messaging, it’s about a radically different way or organizing our lives, of connecting with one another…of everything”

As brands fight for consumer attention and begin to recognize, in greater numbers, the power of this social web, they run the risk of thinking that Social Media is simply a set of tools to install, a few additional rows on an excel spreadsheet.  In actuality, we are witnessing something that is no more or less profound than the evolution of the web and with it, the evolution of human connection and communication itself. I find this to be an excellent place to begin the conversation, over Facebook, text message or in person.