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What can we learn from teenagers in this social life?



I recently read an article from a 16 year old about why teenagers choose Facebook over Twitter. The article is titled “Why Teenagers Don’t And Won’t Tweet.” It was rather fascinating to hear this teenager’s perspective. The one thing that I took away from this article is this…teenagers are social creatures and picky about their online friends. Facebook gives them the opportunity to interact exclusively with their friends. They can manage who sees what, who reads what, and how they interact with others. Teenagers are finicky little creatures. But what they want is real relationships. Twitter is so nebulous to their world, it is hard for them to grasp the mass audience of Twitter.

I know that each time I start a new semester at Clemson, I ask my new students…”What social networks do you use?” All use Facebook, and at a most two students per class (of 20) say they are using Twitter. The same amount that use Twitter have a blog. Teenagers just have a hard time with talking with a mass audience. They want to feel connected. They also have a limited attention span, thus not wanting to invest in another social network that does not bring immediate results. Facebook to them is easy, because they meet someone new, look them up on Facebook, look at their pictures, make an assessment, then decide whether to ask to become friends. They can keep in touch with friends when they move away or when everyone splits up to go to college.

Teenagers are picky. They do not want to share with lots of random people, they enjoy their networks. They enjoy interacting people that they have met in person and regularly interact with in physical space and not just a digital space. They understand the power of human contact. They look at relationships based on some level of trust, trust that begins in-person and extends to the digital space.

Lately, I have been feeling the need to trim down my list of people I “Follow” on Twitter and who I consider “Friends” on Facebook. I talked about this in my post “Fall cleaning, raking leaves, and cleaning-up the social space.” I think a lot of the social complexity and anxiety has come from the Twitter platform. I know I opened my account in the Fall of 2008. I had no idea how to get started? The Twitter “handles” or usernames were so weird to me. It was hard to find people you knew because people were creating weird usernames. I just used my real name @BobbyRettew. So, you started following people based on who your “New” friends were following. You would find someone, then go through the list of who they were following, and clicked “Follow”, “Follow”, and “Follow”.

The terminology of Twitter led to this whole idea of “Thought Leadership.” I will “Follow” you and what you say. Then terms like “Social Media Rockstars” started emerging, placing significance on those who had the most followers. So the natural thought was to go out, follow as many people as possible in the hopes they would follow you back. No real relationship building, just choosing to run through a huge mass of people like walking through the Atlanta Hartsfield Airport during the holidays. You could pass someone, but had no idea if you were following them. Why would a teenager want to sign up for something like this? I challenge each of you to go into a room of 20 plus teenagers and convince them that they need a Twitter account. It is like talking to a room of crickets…and fingers clicking as they tune-out and look at Facebook.

I have also been noticing many people mentioning that they are trimming back who they “Follow” and see as “Friends” online. We are not finding the “relationships” but rather noise. Why did we fall for the idea of friending and following people we did not know, all in the hopes to be followed back. Were we trying to build a sphere of influence or real relationships? Or are we just “push” marketers at heart spraying our information? Regardless…we have lots to learn from teenagers and why they choose Facebook…engaging with exclusive relationships.

Image credit: Los Angeles Times & Washington Post

“Follow Me” just does not work?

There is this big trend that has been going on for a while, especially when promoting our Twitter accounts, asking people to follow you. You see it on CNN, on blogs, in marketing collateral…it is the common jargon when asking individuals to join the community.

I guess it all started with the fundamentals of Twitter with “Following” and “Followers.” But are we a community of leaders. Following suggests we are leading the pack, heading in a direction and the people in our community are right behind us as we dive through our social conversations.

Are we really followers or we just a part of a community of social exchange. When you are interacting in your social communities, do you choose to follow someone. Think about it for a second. Let’s say you go to the grocery store and meet your next door neighbor for the first time. You have a conversation and realize you have something in common. Maybe it is a football team or your kids are in the same algebra class. You choose to continue the relationship, choose to get to know the person. Are you clicking the follow button? Or are you joining a community of conversation that is ultimately building a relationship wrapped around trust.

Twitter has created a discourse wrapped around “Following.” It is a community of fun conversations, interactions, and relationships. But there are many who have chosen to take on the “Follower” discourse as literally as many interpret the Bible. It is the golden truth. We as marketers even leverage the discourse as we build campaigns for our clients. The goal of this literal discourse, create a “Thought Leader.” We build these accounts, set-up blogs, create fan-pages, develop YouTube channels to become “Thought Leaders.” But who are we leading?

Are we really thought leaders in this wide approach to social media communities. Do we really have followers? Is it necessary to tout that we have so many followers? Is it really ego driven and not about community? Do we let it get to our head so much that it has become a pecking order, like the high-school popular crowd. It almost builds a dichotomy, a distinction between the haves and the have nots as we watch individuals/organizations rack up big “Followers” numbers. Or is it really about sphere of influence. We want to increase our followers so we can influence more and more people with our message.

It can be addicting, where everyday we click to see if our numbers have changed. Is it mass media or is it a definitive way to measure success. We use the numbers as a ROI metric which helps marketers calculate value for the dollar. Followers…and interesting choice of words.

Have you sat back and really thought what it means to have “X” number of followers on Twitter. I kind of like Facebook’s approach to the whole thing…”Friends.” We have connected with our “Friends” and we have an exchange of conversation. We get to sit back and watch our friends enjoy their day, and we just say hello or even “Like” something when it strikes our fancy.

Building a community of conversation is not about followers, it is about like minded individuals that chose to engage with one another. The discourse of “Followers” will always be there but we should interpret the language in a different way. We should “Engage.” We should rethink how we interpret the number of “Followers” and “Friends” in our social networks, remember it is a community of people and they are humans.

If these social networks are supposed to be the digital metaphor of our human, social interactions…would you walk up to someone, shake their hand, share a story, then ask them to follow you? Maybe if you are politically minded. Instead you would listen and try to find another time to meet and chat again. To bad we have to chose online to “Follow.” I still like the idea of clicking to find a “Friend.” It makes more literal sense.

Why not take the Dalai Lama approach to our constituency bases and and let them lead the pack?