Say What?

In any advertising campaign, it is important to start with the message you want to convey. Social Media is no different. The first and foremost question you ask yourself should be ‘What is my message?’. The second question (a close second) is ‘How do I share this message with the masses?’. The third, and most difficult, is ‘How is my message being received?’.

On Saturday night after a very long day, I put the movie ‘Hitch’ in the DVD. It is a movie I like, it makes me laugh (even thought I have seen it many times), and because it is a familiar movie, it requires no brainpower. In the movie, Will Smith’s character makes a comment, something like ‘as humans 90% of our communication is non-verbal’. The comment resonated with me. In social media, there is no ‘body-language’ tone or inflection.

Miscommunication happens. It happens to everyone. On Friday, I was working with my partner to manufacture product. We had discussed at length our plan for completing this project. When we reached our halfway point, things were not going as we had planned. We discussed this and I said ‘mix the rest’. What I meant was stick to the plan. What was heard was deviate from the plan. The words were the same in the message sent as in the message received but our meanings were polar opposites.

I know a guy, I introduced him to twitter. He is a nice married 30-something working man. On twitter he is a first rate jerk…his tweets are channeling his inner gangsta. This is fine, except he wonders why no one interacts with him. He often expresses dismay that his tweets are ignored or not retweeted. I know, or think I know, his persona is comedic but no one else knows this. He knows his message, comedy. He knows his medium, twitter. However, his message is not being received.

Is the social media message you are sending and the social media message you want to send the same? Social Media is communication. Nothing more, nothing less. The message sent is only as good as the message received.