By day I’m a social media strategist for what can only be called, an old world company. There’s been a lot of talk of whether that is an actual position. My take is that such a position will be around for a while as the world moves from monologue marketing to dialogue marketing. Most companies of course don’t want to enter a dialogue, and that’s where I come in. We’ll really where you come in as you demand them to talk. When they get the message they call people like me.

I like to think of social media as joining ‘the conversation’. For any particular field or topic there is a conversation happening about it online somewhere. ‘The conversation’ is an encompassing term however. Conversations are happening all across the internet in blogs, forums, comments, etc. ‘The conversation’ can refer to all these little conversations or just the most popular and influential conversations happening around a topic. I should also point out that ‘the conversation’ doesn’t typically include personal conversations. Personal conversations might be the ones you have between friends on Facebook.

So we could look at social media as breaking down to three types of conversations.

• Encompassing (‘the conversation’) – All conversations on a topic from happening on the internet
• Popular / Influential (‘the conversation’) – The most influential conversations on a topic happening on the internet
• Personal / Pertinent – Conversations you have with your friends or a coworker on when to set up a meeting

Joining ‘The Conversation’

Everyone of course wants to join ‘the conversation’. People want to learn, build a reputation, find other like minded people, etc. Companies may want to market their wares, counter some bad press, put a face to a faceless corporation, etc. Joining ‘the conversation’ however is not that easy. Even though ‘the conversation’ is generally free and open it can be difficult to find, keep up with, and build a reputation. This is the whole school yard thing again – you have to find where you fit in. This isn’t new territory for people, but is very new for companies.

Companies have difficulty adjusting to the school yard for a number of reasons:

• Inflated ego – Few of us work for a company we despise. In fact it’s more likely that we drink the Kool-Aid. We take pride in who we work for.
• Want to be with the cool kids – Cool kids mean influence and influence means sales.
• Want to be everywhere – Exclusivity is a defining characteristic of being the cool kids, however more customers means more sales right? Can’t we have both?
• Rarely do self evaluations – Little Jimmy knew he wasn’t fast, so he didn’t join the track team. However companies tend to only see opportunity and feel they can simply buy the needed expertise.

Thinking of social media as a conversation helps put it into perspective and allows us to make analogies. Even though most of us wouldn’t care to relive the first time we stepped into the school yard, we understand it. And that isn’t to say the school yard of social media is cruel like many school yards, but some of the dynamics are the same – reputation, authenticity, etc.