Stop Chasing the Conversation and Start Channeling It

#1 Things You Need to Learn from this Post:
As media continues to converge and conversations continue to splinter, organizations need to decide if they want to expend their energy chasing the conversation or begin channeling it.

A More Detailed Exploration:
Our conversations have always been splintered, but our media hasn’t been. With the dawn of the Interconnected Age, individuals have unprecedented ways of communicating and spreading their ideas, thoughts, and opinions. Not only can they voice what’s in their mind, others can hear and react to it.

All of a sudden, we’re all telepathic and the social media conversation is an overwhelming cacophony. At any time of the day, someone is sharing something that you’re interested in reading, hearing, or watching.

Chasing Conversations
Corporations and non-profit organizations have begun to respond to this new dynamic by creating teams of people to listen to and engage with individuals on these social media platforms. While the importance of online and social media is becoming more obvious to the C-suite, everyone is still just beginning to understand its ramifications to entrenched systems and processes.

The biggest challenge for these social media teams is how thin they are being stretched by chasing the conversation.

In my last post, Why is Your Cause’s Blog So Anti-Social?, I challenged non-profit organizations to make their blogs more engaging. Wendy Harman, who leads social media efforts at the American Red Cross, responded by sharing her thoughts on Twitter in a string of tweets.

While I collected those tweets and posted them as a comment on the blog, Wendy chose to use Twitter as a way of proving a point – people want to converse where it is convenient to them, not the organization. She has found the same blog posts that elicit no comments on the blog will generate multiple comments on Facebook.

Channeling the Conversation
While some might resign themselves to this fate, the causes who want to thrive will reject this notion. They will take advantage of the fact that the human mind wants to use as little energy possible. Therefore, the key is to make it easier and easier for these conversations to happen where you want them.

The image that comes to mind is of water. The nature of water is to find the path of least resistance and to seek the lowest point possible. Understanding its nature allows you to unleash its potential.

If you pour water onto a flat table, it splatters all over the place. If that water flows through a well-designed turbine, energy is unleashed.

Sure the idea is simple and the work to get there will be great. But if your cause wants to grow into a vibrant movement, the time is now to rethink how your online presence makes it easy for these conversations to happen in your living room and not in someone else’s.

How Can We Channel the Conversation?
What are doing that’s working to channel these conversations? What’s not working? Is it even important to channel them? Can you even channel them?

Find me on Twitter:
@scottyhendo