Originally published October 7, 2008.
My business partner, Elisa Camahort Page, is one of the most active social media users I know. She stays current with hundreds of blogs via her RSS feed, and with the hundreds of people she follows on Twitter. Nearly 2,000 people follow her. But though Elisa is the embodiment of the always-on, advanced new media consumer, she has been burned by social media tools and will admit that they present some major landmines.
Elisa was live-blogging an event for bloggers of color, taking notes on her Mac and posting them to her Twitter feed in the required 140-character-or-less sentences. One of the speakers made a controversial, anti-feminist comment that she dutifully posted. Though she mentioned in an earlier Tweet that she was quoting the panelists, not writing her own opinions, the Tweet was misconstrued by one of Elisa’s Twitter followers, who had obviously just read the single quote, not the entire thread.
The follower called out my partner as a hypocrite, criticizing her for being the head of a women’s organization and anti-feminist. And although Elisa was able to correct that single follower via a direct message called an “@reply”, she had no way of reaching out to the followers of that follower, who may have read the incorrect assertion and continued their own conversations around it. The mistaken follower didn’t post a correction of any sort. The misinformation was now out there, carved in virtual stone.
Of course, as a social media marketing advocate for corporate brands, incidents like these make my life harder. I liken them to balls of knotted holiday lights that had been thrown into the garage in January and now need to be sorted out for this holiday season. Do you randomly pull on portions of cords, hoping to untangle the lights, or do you diligently follow them to their origin, unknotting and untwisting as you go? The latter sounds more foolproof, but if the tangle is too complicated, and if the consequences for being wrong are low to nil, you might consider yanking on the cords somewhere in the middle and making the mess even more complicated.
Similarly, bloggers and microbloggers often react on their blogs to content they find “mid-thread” without seeking context or the source of the facts they read, thereby perpetuating the negative search engine mentions, or “Googlejuice” that could develop around a topic or brand.
Now, today, most users know to check several references for information before assuming something is true. But new tools can make all search results seem equally relevant, or too difficult to sort. Some users don’t understand how their words will be referenced later and indulge, oversimplify, and basically act like the humans they are, online.
It’s futile to blame the social media user for not doing her diligence or understanding how to use the tools properly, much like it’s impossible for newspapers to tell its readers they are not allowed to line the cat litter with its ad pages. We, the users, will do with our media what we will, thank you. I’d love to sit down with the developers of Twitter and share some input from us average Janes just trying to stay connected, not sort out the technology. But rather than wait for these tools to become easier to use, I recommend a more proactive approach: Provide context.
Reduce any damage that could result by bloggers getting the story wrong by building relationships with well-reputed sources (note I didn’t say the most popular sources, but the most well-reputed). And consider that these sources may not be big bloggers per se, but big commenters, or big Twitterers—people who love to interrupt rants with facts or alternative thinking. Comment on blogs that have the story wrong by providing real--not jargony, defensive, or promotional--language and facts. And don’t make these comments too long. Bloggers who are reputable are willing to stand corrected and will call out their errors, or at the very least allow your comment to post. And trust that those who don’t will lose credibility over time.
I truly believe that while the public may prefer quick and convenient information it also has a collective BS-meter that points true North. We spot the troublemakers; the cream always rises. That doesn’t mean that other bits of error and innuendo won’t rise with it sometimes, or that publishers and marketers shouldn’t help their readers and customers sort through it. This isn’t marketing as usual, or pitching. It’s providing a better context for readers. In the Web 2.0 realm, it’s customer service.