By Fred Ackourey
David Berkowitz sometimes write quippy stories about how children actions predict the future. See this month’s post in Adage, The Future of Social Media: How does a 10-year-old use it, and you will see what I mean.
Translating this parody, what David is really saying is that social media is changing us, it has more meaning, and he is right. It is structurally changing the way a growing portion of society interacts, not only for our children but for ourselves. And although children seem to be more engaged participants in online media, so are adults but in different ways. Think back when engaging media used to mean, a movie, television show or article that would hold our attention for a long period of time. Today because of the bidirectional/connected nature of digital media, engaging media means something more, something deeper.
Social media, apart from other online medias, has the ability to pull us in closer and faster because timely, relevant and emotional responses are being generated from large communities of interested and sometimes energetic participants. Facebook posts are responded to instantly as are twitter, instagram and even email. These rapid fire connections with interested people have tons of value when properly tapped. However, at the time of this post, many online marketing experts only see this engagement in terms of time spent on a page or the number of pages viewed on a site. What they are missing is that these “engagements” or more aptly “connections” are much, much more, they are “relationships”.
This is a subject I have worked on for a while and implemented in several models across a few different verticals. The results are similar, although the platforms may be different we have been able to use the channel more effectively to communicate with visitors and move them to places of mutual benefit. In short, we found that if you are to increase your marketing effectiveness with social media you need to understand The State of the Relationship of each connection, not how much time someone spends on your site. I will write more about this in a future post. Here is a video with Researcher Brene Brown, speaking at the TED Conference that I hope will give you some insight into the psychology of the connections and will be a genesis for thoughts along those lines; I am sure you will find it interesting at many levels.
Lastly, this is a movie short that was selected at the Toronto International Film Festival, it caught the eye of more than one Film Producer; one of whom shared it with me. Noah, is a 17 minute movie set entirely on a teen’s computer screen. Don’t expect it to reveal some hidden marketing gems or easy answers. Rather, watch it because it gives you the most up to date example of how social media is affecting us, in this case Noah. See how the various obvious and not so obvious relationships that are affecting him and try to imagine how this changes communications, both at a physical and emotional level. After seeing the film I think you will agree that engagement is only the beginning.
Love to hear your thoughts on engagement and the media discussed including the article, TED video and Noah. Contact me directly or leave a comment.
Categories: social media
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