Hashtags, push notifications & other mysteries
2012 degree in social media
My guess is that 2012 will be the first year that someone will be able to graduate with a degree in social media. The explosion in FaceBook, Twitter and dozens of other social media sites has been unprecedented in 2009, and it is no longer just a means of finding a long-lost high school buddy, but a mandatory business tool. The half-life of these services is probably around 3 months. There are over 350 million active FB members (source: http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics) , and 6M Twitter accounts.
I remember back when Windows 98 was new and I first posted a web-page. I thought it was so cool that I learned how to post a link to someone else’s web-site. (pretty ground-breaking stuff for a college drop-out). Now just in the realm of social-media there are hashtags, push notification, iphone integration, blogs, searches, meta tags, vanity URLS, and so many other functions that everyday users can optimize. It can be quite overwhelming for the average user to keep up with all of the “netiquette” and not accidentally SHOUT AT SOMEONE, forget a link-back, or steal a quote rather than retweeting. There are countless consultants attempting to help churches navigate the increasingly crowded market of social media. People are creating entire companies and promoting themselves as “experts” in this new medium. As I learn how to better use these tools and the applications being developed to deliver them from my iphone or desktop, a new crop of them becomes available. (One of my favorites is TweetDeck.) Social bookmarking is becoming a basic expectation of consumers and web-surfers alike, and there is greater and greater demand to integrate.
“Hey could you make my blog on my recent vacation link to my Twitter status, post in FaceBook & LinkedIn auto reference any restaurants I mention on Gowalla, push real-time location data to the navigator in my car, update my iPhone with contact info from people making comments, and develop genius recommendations for activities based upon my profile?”
The problem with the perfect storm of social media integration and demands for easy, mobile access to information is that in the context of the local church we think that simply having presence is the same as having impact. In the rush to be the next guru consulting churches how to be on the cutting edge of social media, no one stopped to ask them why be there?!? I like to call what churches do to trends “the Sears effect.” About the time the gangster-look reached its pinnacle (you remember baggy jeans, boxer shorts showing from the top?) Sears started mass-producing jeans with the tops of boxers pre-sewn into them… that way some poor high school kid trying to look the part didn’t have to risk getting it wrong. This is essentially what churches are doing to social media… they are saying, “Hey we’re on FaceBook”, or, “We let you tweet during service, aren’t we cool?” The concept of developing an overall communications strategy that is authentic, and a good cultural fit to your church was never considered. Worse than that is that no one asked “what do we have to say that matters?” The lack of forethought to the content being promoted online reminds me of Bill Cosby’s classic bit on drugs amplifying personality… but what if you’re an a$%&@!* Before promoting the church website, pastor’s blog or FaceBook fanpage it would be worth the time to discuss the vision and strategy driving the medium, rather than just being enthralled with the technology itself.
