In Appreciation
October 30, 2009 by Jessica Ziegler · View Comments
Today is day three of being pretty well snowed in here in Denver. It’s been a very long time since I’ve been seriously snowed in, probably about 10 years.
We spent eight years living in sunny Las Vegas, where you might get a snow shower every four or five years. Prior to that we lived in Connecticut, where we did get actual snow. The last time I was seriously snowed in was probably in the late ’90s.
I was thinking about that last Connecticut snow-in this morning, thinking about how our world has changed in the last ten years. How differently we all connect to each other, and how much better it is. Ten years ago, when we’d get snowed in we’d have the local TV news to keep us connected to what was happening down the street or 2 towns over. We could make calls or send email assuming that the cable and phone hadn’t been knocked out, most neighborhoods still suffering with above ground power lines. We might connect with our family members, or our closest friends and coworkers. Mostly we sat around the TV and watch the man on the street reports (or “on the driveway” more accurately) from the next town over.
Today, thanks to social media, we are connected to an extended network of people that we can communicate with instantly. I know via updates whose kids are home from school, who’s got the best sledding hill via pictures, how bad the commute into Denver was this morning. We commiserate, share and laugh. People I went to high school with, or that I worked with fifteen years ago know what I’m up to today, and I know about them. We use the social media tools available to us on a daily, if not hourly, basis.
As I sit here appreciating how far we’ve come, I am also appreciative of how this new level of connectedness has created an entirely new business for many of us. We couldn’t have come to the crossroads we are at now, between standard business/advertising practices and the wild west of creative thinking that social media has born, without the extensive acceptance of social media in our lives. Because millions of people have become connected on sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn we are poised at the intersection of business and community. We already know that word of mouth and it’s various subsets (word of mom, etc) is an extremely powerful motivator. Social media allows us access to WOM networks on the largest scale ever.
People have accepted this level of connection and thrive on it. As marketers we need to make sure we don’t mess that up, that we don’t allow the old marketing think of blanket messages to create mistrust or abuse. As marketing professionals, we are the gatekeepers. We have been given a gift, a strong foundation of active participants. Let’s not crap all over it. Protect what we’ve been given by guiding your clients to make better choices in how they interact. It’s going to be work, retraining some of the old-school thinking. It’s hard not to simply bow to the client’s wishes, after all they could stop writing those all important checks. But it’s important, for the protection of what we’ve been given and for the survival of this new industry.
Have you had clients who have come in with ideas for inappropriate marketing tactics for a social media strategy? How have you dealt with those challenges?
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About Jessica Ziegler