The thing that goes bump in the night

Social Media is the boogeyman for most professional strategic communicators. It is arguably one of the biggest nightmares currently facing our profession.  Think about it…it’s the thing that goes bump in the night. President Donald Trump tweets about how Delta had a computer malfunction leading to chaos at national airports at roughly 7am and less than two hours later Delta stocks have already dropped by 1.8% and are continuing to fall. If you worked for Delta in public relations or communications, imagine waking up and having to back track and realize it took one tweet to make your work hell for the next week, if not longer? Social media influences everything, whether we want to believe it or not. It effects our self-esteem, our social lives, even our physical health. It’s our job as professional strategic communicators to figure out how to harness these new forms of media for good rather than evil. We have to make friends with the boogeyman and make everyone realize it’s not so scary after all, especially for the Baby Boomers and the Silent generation.  

The explosive and exponential growth that has been seen from social media over the past decade will continue. There will be better apps built, faster processors created, smaller devices to use to connect us. We can’t ignore social media anymore. It’s now being taught in our undergraduate courses for communications majors. The newer generation of strategic communicators are learning how to develop social media aspects for communications plans. No longer is it just a “fit it in somewhere with the press releases” mentality. Social Media IS the entire communications plan now and is already being utilized as such for some companies in existence today. As social media adapts and changes we have to be able to understand how it can be used for both good and evil before we can truly harness it’s capabilities for our organizations.  We have to understand the dynamics of social media before we can begin to understand what is being said about our organizations and how we ourselves speak about our organizations.

Alexis Ohanian in his TED Talk on “How to make a splash in social media” talked about Mister Splashy Pants, a project conceived of by Greenpeace to save Humpback whales that was turned into a meme that ultimately worked out in Greenpeace’s favor. It “was all done out of interest of doing something cool, and this is kind of how the internet works,” he said. The Internet is certainly a fountain for cool things. Depending on your mood you can find something funny, heartfelt, or dramatic all with just a few searches. It is full of information on any subject you can name or think of. It’s obviously an invaluable resource for modern life. Social media has done the best thing it could do for the world – it has brought people together on an unprecedented scale. It’s allowed people to discuss, in real time, national tragedies, day to day life updates, you name it. If you want to talk about something, there is somebody online somewhere on social media who will talk to you about it. That’s one, if not the, best things about the Internet and social media. But for every like-minded individual you find there is someone else who differs from your opinion. Somebody who may try and bait you into a conversation you may not want to have. Somebody who can push your buttons and make you think the world is a horrible place. It can radicalize your opinions on just about everything, if you let it.

This is social media’s dark side. While applications like Twitter and Facebook can connect us with people all over the world, it also forces us to open ourselves up to differing viewpoints and, in some cases, take a cold hard look at ourselves in the mirror and realize we are part of the problem not the solution. Polarization on applications across the Web is the biggest proponent of evil on social media today. It effects every conversation, every meme posted, even people’s handles on social media! Social media now has the power to unite and divide us. Cass Sunstein claimed that “contemporary media and the Internet have abetted a culture of polarization, in which people primarily seek out points of view to which they already subscribe.” People nowadays go online more to argue than to agree in some cases. Looking for a fight, especially in today’s charged political environment, where one tweet can set off a firestorm of differing opinions, is quickly becoming a national pastime.

It’s our job to remember the good side of social media. The original spirit of connection and unity should be what we put out for our organizations. We have to remember to allow people to share their differing opinions in a constructive way and not add to the ever increasing divide. When we develop social media plans for our organizations, we have to keep in mind that not everybody is going to like what we have to say. The term “troll” comes to mind while I’m typing this. There will be people who speak about our organizations in ways we feel strongly about. We have to remember though, that that discourse has to be allowed and approached in a constructive, and most importantly, strategic way. You can take “bad press” and make it good again. There are ways to make positive splashes on social media from less than stellar remarks. It’s encouraging that more and more high profile companies are utilizing real people versus bots or automated post generators in their social media communications. It speaks volumes to how important social media voices are for companies and organizations. The human voice and its ability to connect us is the reason social media works…it’s the yang to the yin of polarization. We just have to remain open, honest and remember why we do this.

I hope you guys enjoyed my post this week and come back next week! Have a great weekend everybody!