The flow of content in the online world has been described as a firehose. I beg to differ -- it feels more like the world's biggest waterfall to me. It's overwhelming in its vastness, and that's where I am today. Overwhelmed.
When I was learning to swim, I didn't spend time thinking about which Olympic event I was going to enter, I concentrated on getting across the pool in one piece. When I was learning accounting, I wasn't worried about How Am I Ever Going to Write an Annual Report, I worked on understanding credits and debits, and went on from there. And the idea of writing an annual report is still daunting, but it's not on my life list of things to accomplish. I don't need that level of mastery to do what I do.
I remember now, one of the first steps in learning something new is discovering how much you don't know. That's the stage when overwhelm can set in and knock me off track. The same thing is true about this new world I'm trying to embrace. So many blogs to read, so many twitterers to follow, so much material to ingest, I have to give myself a pep talk to just start somewhere. I'm so anxious to take it all in, that it's easy to forget about baby steps, and about celebrating a sense of accomplishment for what I am learning.
I see so many companies and organizations struggling to get their arms around social media and how it should be used. Ultimately, my goal is to be able to help them do that, a natural extension of my marketing know-how. I am experiencing how overwhelming and confusing it can be to enter this arena, and I'm realizing that dealing with those mis-givings is one of the major challenges that companies face, too. That's actually where you have to start -- decide to start. Even getting consensus on that can stretch already thin resources to the breaking point. I can see that part of my role with my clients is to act as a facilitator of the internal dialog needed to make the commitment to start. That I know how to do, and it is a skill that takes years to develop. Digital Natives have the know-how of the technology and Immigrants have the knowledge of the journey to adoption. That's where I can make a contribution.
So I go on reading my Google Reader every morning, and having a TweetDeck window open all the time to easily check in on what's going on online. I heard about the Japan earthquake on Facebook, and about Osama Bin Laden's demise on Twitter. A few months ago that would have been completely foreign to me, so I can see progress. I just have to be patient and diligent in this undertaking.
I had a client in the early 90's who refused to dedicate any resource toward a website because senior management thought it was a passing fad, like CB radio. Their delay has cost them millions of dollars of revenue and lost opportunities in market share that are incalculable. They didn't know how to start, so they just didn't. A Twitter account is not a strategy. An intern doing daily Facebook posts is not an start, it's a bandaid on Victoria Falls. I'm paying close attention to my learning curve so I can help others with theirs. That seems like the most important step to starting.
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