Nic Hodges has written an interesting post where he expresses the view that now that social media is getting real, mainstream attention in business, he believes it has a branding problem.
I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again. I don’t think it’s a branding problem per se, but a problem of language.
Those of us who understand social media and how it works are so excited by the possibilities we try to communicate to our clients (or whomever) about it in our language rather than their language.
It’s not enough to explain the collaboration opportunities of using wikis for knowledge gathering, or of the ability of Twitter to forge connections between disparate and dispersed people, or of the power of blogs as a communications tool. We need to engage in our perfectly natural, enthusiastic evangelism in the language of those with whom we’re talking.
Failing to do so is belligerent, blind and foolish.
Once we talk to people about this stuff on their terms, in a way they understand, a number of possibilities emerge:
- they will build comfort with it
- they will begin to understand it
- they can begin relating it to their problems
It’s only at that point, they can surmount the hurdle of experimentation and participation with social tools. It’s only at that point can we get them to try something that looks new but really isn’t.
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