Justin Kistner

An open letter to social media haters

This comic was adapted from xkcd. Check out Sam’s sweet round up of historical naysaying around tools we now take for granted like internet access and email.

Since the first person tapped social media for commercial gain, there have been daily bus loads of fresh faces to call bullshit. Media calls it hype. Senior managers demand ROI case studies. Clients want endless examples to substantiate why they should listen to you.

Well, I am sick of it.

Sure it is reasonable for people new to social media to want answers to the questions we seasoned folks have long forgotten we asked. Newbies want to know how much time will it take, how does it work, can you *really* make money, who are the leaders, etc. I work with a number of social media participants and they all have similar lessons they have to learn as they grow into an independent contributor, which validates the need for answers during one’s development phase. All perfectly understandable parts of a learning curve.

What isn’t reasonable is a shitty, doubting-Thomas attitude about it. The reality is that blogs are more than a decade old. Web 2.0 has been rocking since the turn of the millennium. Success stories are more plentiful than celebrity gossip blogs. So, by now if you don’t know the value of social media, you are behind!

We’re no longer in the period of time where questioning the value of social media makes one look savvy. You should know that now when you write your article casting doubt on the value of social media, you look out of the loop. I’m telling you this because you might get fooled into thinking that you just burst the social media bubble. But, you didn’t. Your article may have had a bunch of page views, but your audience is the other people who are also out of the loop that are ignorantly hoping what you said was true. They are scrambling to remain relevant during this changing of the guard and will flock to anything that says they don’t need to evolve. Congregating together in ignorance doesn’t invalidate social media, it just makes you easier to spot as part of the old-school.

If you’re new to social media, make no mistake that you have some catching up to do. My advice is that you do so gracefully. Those of us enjoying success in social media don’t need to help you. We certainly don’t want to prove to anyone that social media is valuable. Why? Because we don’t need you to believe in social media in order to get value out of it. I even get a competitive advantage from knowing more than you. It benefits me that you’re hating on social media. And, I happen to know the only people that don’t believe in social media are those that either 1) Don’t participate or 2) Have poor social skills. Consider this post your notice that all of the answers you seek are available from the people you’re calling into question. You will get your answers from participating with them, not from standing on the sidelines and heckling them.

The silver lining here is that we’re a friendly bunch. You can easily befriend someone that is doing well with social media to get some pointers. I know I like helping people that are excited about starting a blog or signing up for Twitter. However, if you come tearing onto the scene acting like we’re all a bunch of liars or naïve hippies, you probably won’t get much help. If you come into our discussions looking for help by saying “prove it” or “I think it’s all a bunch of hype”, you will alienate people. I know senior managers and my Dad think that doubting pessimism is a great way to elicit answers, but it’s anti-social in its approach and will get you nowhere. Instead, you’ll find yourself in the company of other clueless Luddites because your approach offended and drove off the people who could have helped you.

07/15/2008 social media