Image and quote from Tara Hunt
As a communication consultant, I get a lot of questions about the technical side of social media. But I rarely meet clients who want to learn about digital culture. (I really appreciate the clients who do, as well as my colleagues who discuss this kind of stuff with me.)
The interesting debates about digital media have always (to me that is) been about the impact of technological changes on our culture. Does Facebook change our criteria for “knowing someone”, blur the boundaries between acquaintances and friends, turn people you met randomly once into real connections? How do Google and Wikipedia fit into the way we teach students how to research something? Does the rise of Instagram, Snapchat and Vine indicate that we are generally communicating more visually than before? Too often, questions like this are ignored in favor of discussions about how to use specific features of Facebook or Twitter to get the maximum number of eyeballs pointed at a certain product.
Tara Hunt has written a blog post I want to put on everyone’s required reading list. It’s not a complaint about “marketers don’t understand my geeky online sub-culture”, but a good explanation of what makes the internet special and how companies should adapt to this. Trying to appeal to “the mass” is less important compared to finding a niche. Listen about three time as much as you talk. Brands have better options these days than “interrupting the socializing for their commercial breaks”.
According to Julie 