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?
If you enjoyed this post from Conversation Agent, subscribe, share and like it. Sign up for my Premium Newsletter.