And ain’t ain’t really a word.
I’d like to think that the Internet allows me to be everywhere at once.
But it doesn’t, really.
Social networks, location based services and constant connectivity through broadband and mobile certainly help. And it all comes at a relatively low price. Or free, in the case of most social networks.
There’s a catch, though. The hidden cost of time.
It isn’t easy being everywhere at once, though that’s something a lot of us would love to be able to do. Both personally and professionally. But it comes at the expense of time dedicated to learning the network or the equipment which you are using, or, the easy part, as well as the hard part, or, the time invested in building a network, developing a message and satisfying the goals of brand development and trust, along with any applicable bottom line business need.
Now it’s becoming a commitment.
Personally, I’ve always been an advocate of trying everything. I’m anchored in Twitter and Facebook, but also have spent plenty of time using Friendfeed, Plurk, Identi.ca and the gone-but-not-yet-forgotten Pownce. For location-based fun, I’ve played around a bit on Brightkite, but have the most fun on Foursquare. And that’s just a select few places I’ve ventured on the social web (as a side note, it’s my quirky mission to reserve my name as a username wherever I go – you’d be surprised how many of us there are!).
I’ve done this on my own time. Some call it addiction, some call it madness. But I prefer to think I’m striving to keep abreast of communication and social technology.
Businesses are doing it too. And that’s where it really gets tricky.
Sure services like the recently-acquired-by-Seesmic-so-you-can-post-everywhere-service, Ping.fm lets you broadcast to the mass audience spread across the capacious expanse of the social Web, delivering one message to multiple sites. But where’s the fun in that? It’s broadcasting, and it misses the point. That’s what TV and the radio are for.
Now everyone wants to, for lack of an unabused cliché, ‘join the conversation.’
Conversation implies there’s certain balance between listening and talking. That’s not possible from the ivory tower of a social broadcast service such as Ping.fm. Broadcasting is OK given that there’s someone monitoring each service and participating in any successive conversation the initial message produces.
In my personal use of social media I tend not to link any one network to another. My tweets are for my twitter audience. They won’t make sense to my network on LinkedIn or my friends on Facebook. And while theoretically a business message does not change across various media, it should be tailored to fit the specific audience inherent to those that use the network. Simply, the MySpace users are not the Facebook users. And so on.
So, yes, it’s easy to join the conversation. But in day-to-day life as in business, it takes a healthy commitment to absorbing the culture and contributing where possible.
Pick your battles. Learn the experience each service offers. Adapt to it. Don’t treat your audience, your friends, your network, like dummies.
They know when you’re faking it.
Sounds like a lot of work.
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