One of my favorite pastimes has always been watching people watching, you learn a lot. One day I started paying more attention to the environment we were living and how this marketing and media revolution was changing the game. Indeed, during the last two years the game has changed considerably, it has turned more smart and selective.
Social media was born as something difficult to measure, but inevitably it appeared new ways of measure our activity and its results. It was not easy, sure, and it did not happen in one night, but eventually business began to discover new winning paths using the social web.
Social Media is Evolving
Social media, as any other type of marketing and communication, it is evolving right now. Through the last years, advertising and PR were focused on the “big idea”: manipulating the hearts and minds of organizations and individuals… and thus, business itself. Then the question was… How could I manipulate and alienate businesses and people? Nobody knew exactly how to do it, but the numbers – from whenever they come – showed that it worked.
The “Social” Revolution
Time before the Internet appeared and with it digital, and then the revolution, the “social” revolution, meaning the disruption of marketing and communication. The Internet destroyed any kind of frontier that prevented from a free, human, authentic and genuine communication, today the social web has thunder any trace of retention measure towards a global communication. Now, creating connectivity and resonance with any person of this world is possible, yes it’s possible. All thanks to certain human extensions called Twitter, LinkedIn, blogs, Facebook, Foursquare, Pinterest, Instagram, Flickr, Youtube, Google +. We had something really valuable to work with.
Back to the Past Again?
However, we wanted to step further before saving what we had closer, people. We forgot creating long-lasting relationships with our community members. The fact that hundred of thousands of organizations, agencies and marketers were not paying attention to the existing link between relationships, results and measurement made that they started ironically focusing on online advertising, massive marketing and influence. Sadly, it take us back to the conversation isolation and media saturation, it take us back to the over-communicated past society.
Happily, it is changing again. Thanks God we are more human than ever and we’re looking for this small ray of light that the social web creates, and not for the disturbing noise that come with it.
Photo credit: scrap your adventure.