Surprise: social is social, whether online or IRL

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about engagement. Maybe it’s because I worked for a great daily newspaper, The Albuquerque Tribune (not sure how long that link will last), that failed to engage large numbers of people (ie, cause them to buy newspapers), and so it went out of business. We toiled and labored and sweated and cared and sent great journalism out into the world and heard mostly echoes. We thought constantly about how to engage people and we experimented with lots of things. (One of the basic problems was that we were still using a telegraph when the rest of the world was moving on to telephones, but that’s another story.) Maybe it’s because one of the basic elements of PR is getting the word out.

I’m writing this post as I notice my numbers on the various social networking sites climbing. The numbers aren’t huge, but they’re respectable for New Mexico. They’re big enough that whatever steps I take next will need to be more strategic. For instance, if I want to grow beyond my roughly 3,300 Twitter followers, I’ll have to think about how to interact with that many people–or whether that’s really possible at all. I’m sometimes baffled by who all of my followers are…since I’m there to connect, I’m curious about who they are, what they want, why they’re interested in me (a guy with a fairly enigmatic bio and a tendency to Tweet about almost anything).

So I’ve been experimenting here and there, seeing what kinds of things might entice people to interact. I started a Twitter talk show called #abqtalk on Fridays that has drawn perhaps a few dozen people on its good weeks. I’ve tried other things. One day, I asked people to send me an @ reply with a simple “hello.” Of the 3,000+ followers, 14 did (and I thank them). Even accounting for the various time zones people are in around the world, that’s not a heck of a lot of engagement. It works out to about 0.4%, in fact. To be fair, Twitter, is only one network, with its own quirks (e.g., many people see it as a “broadcast” medium).

Facebook is another place I invest substantial networking time. There, I’m approaching 400 followers, and that number really matters to me, because I recognize and know almost every one of those people or groups. It truly reflects my friendships.

So it shouldn’t have been a surprise that when I made a note on my wall about our wedding anniversary–something I thought of as a simple statement of gratitude–the note got 19 “likes” and 22 comments (so far). Though most of the comments are simple “congratulation” messages or acknowledgements of having read the post, nevertheless, that’s about 10% engagement.

Embedded here are a couple of “no duh” lessons. As much as I talk and think about social media, it’s still easy to overlook just how basic a lot of this really is.

1. Talk about things people care about (like relationships with people they know and care about). AND
2. Build on “real” relationships.

Don’t take that second one the wrong way. There are lots of people (more all the time) whom I’ve met initially online and only later connected with “in real life.”  Online life is “real” enough, and in fact continually surprises me with just how real it is.

And that, really, is my point here. You can’t fake relationships. Your social networks are only as good as the quality of your relationships. And what we need to be populating our online lives with is exactly the kinds of things that make up our face-to-face lives: no more, no less.

A wise editor at The Trib, a person who had worked with some of the old-timers, had a bunch of simple rules, one of which was: use as many names of people as you can in the newspaper. Look for ways to include more people. People want to read about themselves, their friends, their children, their neighborhoods. At the time, I thought it was simplistic. I had grand ideas of journalism. Over time, though, the notion has grown on me–all media, ultimately, are social, and what we’re looking for there is ourselves. (I believe those two strains of journalism can be melded, BTW–but that, too, is another post.)

In any case, thanks for indulging me as I work my way around to the obvious. What do you think–what are the ways we’re not treating our online lives as the social processes they are? Are we standing right next to each other yelling that we don’t have anyone to talk to?

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