A recent post by my pal, Sherry Heyl, The Future of the Web (is not Twitter!), got me thinking once again about relevance. Sherry aptly pointed out that the tools of communication are always evolving, but the pace of evolution (and revolution) of those tools continues to increase.
The Internet isn’t a single form of communication, it is a breeding ground for millions of experiments in ways for people to reach each other, singly and en masse. If a new tool is lucky and skillfully promoted it may gain attention and grow audience, but unfortunately relevance does not always scale with the numbers. Something that starts out relevant can lose focus or become dissipated by the noise of an ever-increasing user base. Success seems to necessitate an aftermarket of filters and management tools for any social media experiment to retain relevance for its users.
Part of the challenge is that relevance isn’t a one size fits all proposition. I may find discussions of Drupal theming to be quite relevant to me, a Drupal user, but your mileage may vary. I’m also going to seek out information on cutting-edge marketing – left to external filters, the marketing and the Drupal are not likely to get lumped together, but for me the combination is highly relevant.
Wikipedia seems to do a good job of maintaining relevance by embracing irrelevance, or rather by embracing the notion of asymmetric relevance. Those that really care about a subject have an opportunity to get highly involved in the discourse, while others are free to get engaged in completely other topics. But don’t mix ’em! If you try bringing something irrelevant or off-topic to any given Wikipedia article it will be made abundantly clear that only relevance is welcome here. This is why you can find great articles on particle physics and equally great articles on B movies.
Unfortunately Twitter doesn’t seem to be doing as good a job of cultivating relevance. Today I received a follow from a Twitter user and did my usual investigation – I looked at the user’s profile and observed that this user had 1000 or so followers and about 1300 they were following. These weren’t unusual numbers by any means, but what I found odd was that the number of messages this Twitter user had actually produced to date was two. That’s it, two messages: The first a mention that the user had just added a background to the profile, and the second being a link to the user’s website – an unveiled come-on promoting an ebook. It seems highly unlikely to me that upwards of 1000 people, based on these two simple messages have really found the relevance emanating from this user to be sufficient to warrant subscribing to the Twitter account. I suspect, however, that a 1000+ people have auto-following setup via a 3rd party tool and probably have no idea that they’ve volunteered to receive the messages from this user, or many of the others that are now dissipating the relevance of their Twitter streams.
Many are choosing to ignore relevance in the hopes of rapidly growing their audience, but an audience that is built on irrelevance isn’t an audience that’s listening. It is an audience that is ignoring, or at best, filtering.
How are you managing the balance of irrelevance and relevance in your use of social media? How do you keep open to things that you don’t yet know will be relevant to you, when you’re trying to filter a sea of questionable information?
Hugs, Punches and Business Communications
What does a hug feel like? It is a simple thing to do – the instructions are short: Person A and Person B embrace and then separate – duration varies, sighs are optional. What could be simpler? But this action belies a richness of emotion. The complexity of expression a hug can convey is enormous, human and irreplaceable.
The hug is an extraordinarily efficient means of communication. We hug for lots of reasons: pride, affection, belonging, friendship, comfort and sympathy. We hug because we missed someone. We hug because we will miss someone. We hug because we love – and the amazing thing is that in every hug those intangibles are clearly communicated.
Businesses should communicate so well.
We aren’t wired to get emotional about sanitized communications, but business isn’t supposed to be mushy, right? We don’t hug spreadsheets…
So how do we reconcile this? How do we get some clarity and human contact without getting sappy or sentimental?
What about a punch?
Punches, like hugs, can clarify relationships. Think about it.
If someone punches you square in the face it will shake the ambivalence right out of you. You’ll be “in the moment”. It is, as they say, very centering.
Yes, we associate punches with anger and aggression, but a punch is not always evil. A punch in the arm is jovial, a fist-bump is hip and benign, even a little rough-housing amongst kids can be a bonding act. Have you ever seen a coming-of-age flick without a big, cathartic, punch-out scene? It is is a cliche of modern movies.
Even when a punch is meant to harm one could argue that it is a form of overloaded expression – more often the product of an emotional upwelling than malice of forethought. We punch when our system can’t process the information through any other route. We punch because we are imperfect communicators. We punch because we are human and we hate, and we love.
But businesses are supposed to be predictable and unemotional, right? Hmm.
But there are lessons:
Punches and hugs unambiguously communicate a lot in a very short amount of time.
So be clear and concise.
They are hard to fake: You can fake the aftermath, the reaction, but if you pull the punch or you don’t return the hug the person on the receiving end will know it instantly.
So be authentic.
Hugs and punches differ, however, in predictability: You can pull out your calendar and name a bunch of dates on which you can say, with great certainty, that you will be hugged. Thanksgiving, Christmas, your birthday, etc. – the hugs are coming! Yet that will not diminish by one iota the spontaneity, the genuine emotion of any single one of those future embraces. On the other hand, unless you are a boxer, any punches that you might receive this year are likely to be shockingly unexpected.
So put the positive messages on a regular schedule, keep the close, interactive communication on a high rotation. Make statements of care something your customers can expect.
But isn’t this a risky approach for a business?
To hug a friend is only risky if you don’t mean it. To hug a stranger is always risky (you might get punched) – it puts a lot on the line and demands a reaction that cannot be controlled – but if you can hug a stranger and mean it the outcome can be amazing.
Humanness, authenticity, spontaneity, risk, emotion, shock and love – business-think eschews these messy ideas, it is more business-like to scrub away the emotion, focus on the data, the specs, the ROI and the bottom line. But we’re human. We crave connection and reassurance, comfort and belonging, and the occasional jolt of clarity. What do businesses crave? They crave loyalty. Loyalty, after all, is good for the bottom line, but where does loyalty come from? Loyalty is emotional, by definition. It doesn’t come without trust, but there is no trust without an emotional connection.
Businesses often won’t risk what is necessary to make us feel that connection. Businesses need to risk some punches if they want to win some hugs. Communicate with authenticity, be genuine, be human, and take chances. Accept the idea that no communication connects for everyone – not everybody wants to hug you, but your time, your energy, your thoughts, and your words are better spent meeting, cultivating and embracing the ones that do.