Many times, when I hear someone talking about social media, they are merely reciting talking points.
Let me say that again, so that the next time you hear someone talking about social media, you hear it differently than you do now.
Many times, when I hear someone talking about social media, they are merely reciting talking points.
I am forced manytimes to listen to people talk about social media. And manytimes they are saying the same thing. Don't talk about eating a ham sandwich for lunch. Don't broadcast, be part of the conversation. Cliche after cliche. Bullet point after bullet point. Everyone's an expert – the same expert. And they are all selling the same product, which is the common wisdom.
The problem with this is that the people who truly succeed know all these cliches and have mastered the common wisdom and then they proceed to break one or more of these so-called "rules" in a fundamental way, dazzling their audience. (And then all the run of the mill "social media consultants" blog about it, and then try to copy it.)
Social media is what you make of it. No more, no less. It is not a cult. It is not a community. It is a set of tools that connect people and information. They do the same thing for everyone, no matter who you are and what your goals. They are no different than a phone, an email address, or an instant messaging handle. Not fundamentally.
Let's break down one of the most common cliches about a popular social media too, Twitter. Many people have said many times, "It's not about telling people what you had for lunch." The naysayers are wrong. They are so wrong that you should probably stop socializing with people who say this.
That's not because everyone wants to hear what you had for lunch, though. It's for at least two reasons.
One, some people are so good at storytelling that they could make an audience interested in their lunch for 10 minutes, live, unrehearsed. If you can't, you're a BAD storyteller. People will listen to good storytellers, and will not listen to average ones. And ultimately, media – any media, including the social kind – is about telling stories to an audience. Thus, lunch can be interesting. How you cook it, where you shop, who you're eating with, the ingredients, the time of day, the place you're eating, the special occasion, and any number of other aspects. If lunch is just "I'm eating a ham sandwich" to you, news flash – you're boring.
Two, lunch is a huge niche. As are breakfast, dinner, happy hour, and brunch. As is the food and beverage industry in general. Let me give you a personal example. I've recently started cooking more, and from time to time I broadcast what I'm making. This morning I made an omelet with almonds and honey (why not?), tweeted about it, and posted my recipe on my Facebook wall. Numerous people were interested, complimented me, made additional suggestions even. Rachel Ezrin from New York (who I don't really know), even paid me this compliment – I'm her go-to person for brunch info! How did that happen? I must be saying interesting things to my audience.
It goes further. Elon James has turned brunch, his hobby, into a business with his We Brunch Hard website. He has photos, text, community discussion, and t-shirts. He's turned a passion in to cash. He has a Twitter hashtag, a Facebook group, and a following. He has broken the rule about "not tweeting about your lunch" so hard that he's changed the game entirely. Some chefs and other people passionate about food may want to follow his lead.
True, you don't want to use social media to talk about what you eat all the time. But you don't want to use it to talk about anything all the time. If you do that, you're boring, and you're probably a failure at utilizing social media in a productive way, too. I talk about tech a lot. Elon talks about how he is not white. Everyone – every person, every consultant, and every brand – needs to change it up a bit. A pitcher who only throws fastballs gives up some home runs once people figure out his game.
The point is that most of the discussion around social media is so follow-the-leader, so trend-of-the-moment, so completely amateur, that it simply isn't worth listening to. I hate to break it to you, but only 10%, or maybe 5%, or maybe even 1% of people saying anything are saying anything both original and worth listening to. And besides the repetitiveness much of the rest of it is fanboy and fangirl salivation over the new geo-location feature of Twitter, the new Starbucks badge on FourSquare, and the new Digg overhaul. To them, social media is not a tool – it's a club that they're part of.
None of that matters to you, probably. You probably have a serious job and have serious problems to solve, or serious competition to destroy. Whatever the blogging heads are saying, you need to figure out if social media applies to you, and if so, the details of how. Don't pay attention to what people say it should be used for, pay attention to what YOU think it should be used for.
Experiment, brainstorm, act, succeed.
And remember – brunch is the most important meal of the day.
