Having watched a recent TEDtalk (http://bit.ly/NxnMxY), it got me thinking about stuff. Work stuff as usual; in particular our experiences in the use of social media in our fledging BA business in London town. I want to share one of the many great points he discusses in his talk and what it meant to me.
I really love Clay Shirky's concept of the asymmetry of media: media that is good at creating groups is no good at creating conversation; and media that is good at creating groups is no good at creating conversation.
This resonates with me and the team that I work with as we had a similar discussion about engaging with our customers - existing and potential. The conversations centred on my observation of broadcasting versus engaging in conversation. And is there some lesson to be learnt with regards to intimacy.
Shirky's observations of the medium of the web as (of course) true. There is a confluence of media in the thing that is the web - written word, video, audio, etc. But whilst the medium of the internet allows the conversations to go on alongside one another; it relies on the producer engaging the reader/consumer on those channels in order to have a collaborative conversation.
Sure, we can use one of these sub-media of the internet to initiate a dialogue. We need to be conversant in the remaining media types to ensure that the initial contact maintains some energy and richness, that there is a reason to carry on engaging. To be clear,I don't mean using different media for different media's sake - I mean using the right media for the right message to the right audience.
That talk taught me not to think too narrowly in terms of a dialogue, consider what I and trying to say and why but most importantly considering the reason in context and selecting an appropriate initiator medium with suitable flow from there.
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