On a Collision Course

Connections have a long tail -- they are built over time. Connections happen in real life. There's no hiding in real life. Your assets must be real. Just like in business, eventually you will be found.

You will also agree with me that social networks have made it easier to post messages to small and large groups.

And marketers are pumping up the volume by encouraging this behavior -- everyone posting, sharing, reposting, retweeting, commenting...

Sometimes both the tools and the rewards make it too easy. They make it too easy to hit the publish button before you've had the chance to think about the content you are sharing.

Yet you are sharing because there is a race going on.

A race on who writes more, shares more, posts more, has more traffic to their sites, gets more followers, and so on. In some cases, social over-sharing leads to the loss of business. Was the consequence justified?

Whether you agree or not about the appropriateness of that remark causing the re-evaluation of the agency, the fact that it happened in the public forum signals something else. People have traded mindlessly switching through channels to mindlessly publishing to channels.

Just because you can, does it mean you should?

The real time trap

Things happening in real time, combined with the advice repeated by many "experts" who may or may not have the best interest of your organization at heart, give people a false sense of urgency. Have you ever regretted having said something you cannot take back?

Why would you not want to think about something you put in a medium that makes it permanent?

Connection is the opposite of collision. Connection in real time happens when you put effort into understanding the context and placing the appropriate content in it.

Where is your attention?

I speak a couple of languages and studied a few more I don't actually speak -- Latin and ancient Greek among them. One of the best ways to be understood when learning to speak a new language is to get the accents right. Your imperfect words said the right way get the message across.

The way you can control how you say something is by paying attention. Try Chinese without getting the right inflection, you'll be saying something you did not intend.

Everyone gets why you are saying something -- often it is because you want to connect. If you're into jargon that has gotten quite a bit of over-exposure, you want to make conversation so you can engage people. How you say it makes the difference between connection and collision.

Are you on a collision course?

 

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Comments

[peter]

Two thoughts - one short and one longer

"Everyone gets why you are saying something"

This reminded me of a line from Orwell's essay Politics and the English Language "The great enemy of clear language is insincerity".

"How you say it makes the difference between connection and collision."

For me, a collision is just a connection with impact. A bit like a throne is a bench covered in velvet ( lovely quote from Bonaparte). It's all about the meaning.

I do agree how we say something is important. But how do I communicate an idea that the listener has no experience of and no word. I can say un chien and, yes, with a little bit of self conscious inflection the french listener recognises a dog.

"Your imperfect words said the right way get the message across" but only if the other has a word for dog. If the other has no word for dog, I have a real problem unless I can speak clearly with precision and patience.

Of course, I'm not asking about dogs but fresh ideas. How do we have "new" conversations when words are failing us and clarity is the first victim of the race to publish?

[Valeria Maltoni]

indeed, I have experienced the second part of your comment consistently as I look to communicate a vision for something that doesn't exist yet... I'm actually wrestling with publishing less. Fewer new ideas here.

[RyoatCision]

Valeria, I love, love, love this distinction between connection and collision and think it really hits home. You are right, there is so much anxiety about sheer volume that we often lose sight of quality. One thing we have been thinking a lot about at Cision, my company, is how this applies to metrics, the measurements of success of your blog, Twitter feed, Facebook page etc. The convention is page views, followers—a blank, boring count, and we’ve come to feel that doesn’t tell the right story and perhaps, in fact, succumbs to this anxiety over volume. The tools are nascent, but they are getting better, and I do think the culture will soon follow where we measure our reach and influence by truer variables, by the comments, link sharing and, even more qualitatively, simple value of engagement we have, the enjoyment we derive from these conversations. I love seeing posts like this that caution to slow down and be thoughtful. I think as the hype of social media settles a little, we will get more comfortable and a little more patient. Thanks for sharing. @ryoatcision

[Valeria Maltoni]

and of course, you all know that the measure of quality needs a constant to track -- a characteristic and definition established ahead of time and agreed upon to define that experience by...