When I was in sixth grade, sometime in November, my teacher announced that we’d be having class officers elected for student council: one representative per homeroom class. For some reason, I got really excited about this, and just threw my name into the nominee list. And somehow I got officially nominated. And then somehow again, I got elected.
The phrase ‘Joining the Conversation’ has been mangled, dumbed down, and twisted into “talk talk talk”.
At that time, I really didn’t know what was involved into being a student body representative, and to this day, I still don’t really know. When it came time for the monthly student council meeting, I always forgot to go. I never voted on anything, I never participated in any way. However, come time for the field trip to see Jeb Bush talk and class pictures, I made sure I was there (I was a pretty crappy 6th grader huh?).
I jumped on the bandwagon before I knew what was actually in the bandwagon. I pretty much ate some cookies that I found in the bandwagon and jumped off before I had to do anything. So the question is: Was I an actual student council member?
There’s a lot of discussion going on about companies, and how they are (semi) “Joining the Conversation” (See Brian Oberkirch, Alex Hillman and Jeremy Owyang for some good reading).
Companies like to talk. You know they do. A lot of it comes out like Charlie Browns teacher: “blah blah blah. blah blah.” . The phrase ‘Joining the Conversation’ has been mangled, dumbed down, and twisted into “talk talk talk”. Essentially, they want the cookies, just no risk involved.
At some point in time, ‘Join the Conversation’ meant being human and real. As a person I could talk to you and you would listen, and reply. Talk. Listen. Discuss. That’s the easiest way to sum this whole thing up.
Last year, I had a client who wanted to have a blog. As I was wrapping up the theme, I began to add in the comments to the theme. The client freaked. No comments, they said. We don’t want any negativity on our site. We want to be able to control the content on our site.
There is no, “I support social media… kind of”. You do or you don’t folks. No one gets to eat the cookies on the bandwagon and then jump off.
If you don’t mind though, I think i’m going to go grab some cookies. mmm.
5 Comments
well said. and i’d say fairly average sixth-grader.
Dig the cookie metaphor. Well said.
I agree with you about the talking. Especially within the Web 2.0 niche, where I agree with Ethan Kaplan’s notion of less parties, more innovation.
However, I do disagree with your idea of “do it or don’t.” Bullshit. Social media is not a religion, it does not have rules, and it is not the “correct” way to run a website. It is simply what is currently popular in the eyes of VC’s and web designers. It is not “correct” to run a blog with comments or “correct” to interact with social media. It is simply the current norm, and is generally a good idea to do so. But we are still talking a about a matter of trend, opinion, and money more than fact, rule, law, common sense, etc. Don’t forget it.
@danhollister
From a ‘join the conversation’ perspective what’s the point without having a public interaaction with customers?
Comments is just an example; nowadays we have thing such as get satisfaction, etc.
I’m not saying there is not a benefit. I think it’s moronic when people have blogs without the ability to comment. I’m just saying that your one-sided thought process that somehow requires “joining the conversation” at all in order to be successful or do something interesting is not true. I can still point out asstons of successful websites, blogs, companies, etc that have absolutely no outlets for user feedback. I am not criticizing your opinion, but rather, the way you say it. As if someone would be an idiot or would be “wrong” to not shove their business into social media outlets.