No I Won’t Make Your Traditional Ideas Digital, You Should Make My Social Ideas Analog.

  By Tac Anderson | January 6, 2010 - 10:50 am | Comm

This is going to be one of those posts.

<rant>

You have probably heard some variation of this lately:

“Can you just take our (traditional) ideas and make them digital?”

I’ve even been asked to “Sprinkle your magic on this.” Uh, is that a euphemism for something? (#yesiam12) (#yesiusedahashtaginablog)

I understand why PR/Marketing people ask this. It’s easy. For the most part traditional tactics translate very well digitally. Social media has an amazing ability to amplify traditional efforts. But there’s a problem with that approach.

Social media is not an afterthought. Digital is not an add-on.

Don’t get me wrong, as much as I’d like to say we should only be doing social/digital, that’s not right either.

Every effort should be addressed by identifying your customer, their needs and the best way to help them. From there the tactics become obvious.

</rant>

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About Tac Anderson

Social media anthropologist. Communications strategist. Business model junkie. Chief blogger here at New Comm Biz.
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  • http://twitter.com/emilybv Emily B Verkruyse

    Tac,

    I completely agree! So many people approach social media from the wrong perspective, and then wonder why they don't see the results that they want or expect. The challenge here will be to convince old-school thinkers to undergo a total paradigm-shift. Those who are able to do so will be the ones who succeed.

    Thanks for a great post, albeit a rant!

    Emily
    http://www.emilybv.com

  • http://tdhurst.com tdhurst

    Um…so how do you propose people use social (digital) ideas in an analog way?

  • http://www.newcommbiz.com tacanderson

    You know, print up the web pages and hand them out :) j/k

    Events, additional news coverage, white papers for sales people, etc.

  • http://twitter.com/researchgoddess Amybeth Hale

    If you looked at Ron Paul's presidential campaign last year on Facebook only, you'd have thought he would win by a landslide. But I think he only managed to get about 4% of the popular vote. Focusing solely on digital/online audience excludes a great majority of eyeballs.

    When you approach social media as an entity in and of itself, or as you say an 'add-on', you're breathing life into something that isn't self sustainable. It has to be a part of a bigger picture – which includes offline interaction. I love talking about this in person with people who attend meetups and tweetups. It is a perfect setting to prove how much stronger the connection is when it is taken offline. Sure, making connections with marketing or PR objectives in mind via digital methods is innovative in most people's eyes, but if that's all you do people will see through the facade eventually. There's no amount of magical sprinkles that will replace a solid handshake and a good face to face conversation :)