Maybe you just need to be born to new media to “get it”. The Social Media panel at DEW today was a far cry from the big media panel I talked about in an earlier article. With panelists ranging from Kirsten Stubbs of Roc Nation to Sean Plott of Day9.tv, these people were speaking my language.
Rather than talking about how the bottom line drives every decision, they talked more about how every decision can drive the bottom line. Rather than talking about how many likes their Facebook page has, they talked more about engagement.
Sean even mentioned that he knows many of his users by name (username) and recognizes them when they join the chat stream. His number one goal is to provide a killer service for his audience. Pay close attention to this; it’s the way of the entertainment revolution – caring first about your purpose!
[tweet “For too long big networks and many businesses have put power at the wheel.”]
I’ve said this in other blog posts and want to reiterate it here. There are three human drivers: power, purpose, and pleasure. For too long big networks and many businesses have put power at the wheel. Now, with the advent of the largest distributed communication system in history – it’s becoming obvious that putting purpose at the wheel is the only way to achieve long term power and pleasure.
There were so many great ideas flying around the room that I could barely keep up with my task of note-taking. Here are just a few quotes that I found useful when thinking about how to “use” social media and communities. Now, let’s say it the new media way – how to interact with our audience on social media and in communities.
Kirsten Stubbs – “Assess the conversation already happening.” She followed that up by saying “The most important part of social media is listening”
I love this. The more time we spend listening to the voices of our audience, the better we can serve them; serving them is what we should be doing.
Sean Plott – “My whole audience doesn’t hang out on Facebook the way they used to; it’s more upkeep for them now. They’re on Reddit or Twitter”.
I won’t even go into the speech I heard – just an hour prior – from a Facebook exec talking about how they’re going to drive more ads into our streams. Yuck! I think Facebook is going to start losing if they don’t start listening.
Dominic Franceschi – “Don’t tell them how to act in your community. Set the tone.”
I think we should remind ourselves that if we’re going to be part of the conversation we can’t cripple that conversation with rules. As content creators or community builders it’s simply our job to set the tone of the conversation.
Eric Moro – “If I’m doing my job, Wikia will be the next big social community”
Check out Wikia when you get a chance. It has a really cool style and there is something for just about everyone. It’s worth digging in a little to see how a social community should look.