The 3 stages of growth in the social media participant learning curve
I’ve helped dozens of people join the social web. I’ve helped my friends and family as well as C-level executives. While everyone has unique needs during their development process, they all seem to go through three stages of growth:
- Skills
- Focus
- Enlightenment
The purpose of this post is to provide some reference for people going through this learning curve and to offer a resource to those who coach people through it.
1. Social media skills
During the skill development stage, participants are figuring out the terminology, tools, and etiquette associated with social media. It’s mostly a technical skill development time where one learns how to do such activities as login to a CMS, embed a link, or how to leave a trackback. With regular interaction, most people make it through this stage in a month or so.
2. Focusing on the social web
Once a person learns how to consume and generate content socially online, they run into the next challenge: information overload. Everyone goes through a period where they can’t stay on top of the incoming communications, talk too much, and struggle to find meaning in all of the tracking stats. This can take anywhere from a month to a couple of months, depending on the participants aptitude and commitment.
3. Social media enlightenment
After a person becomes proficient and efficient in their social media engagement, they begin to see the world in a different light. I won’t go into too much detail here because of two reasons 1) If you’re not at this stage, anything I say will sound like far-fetched-hippy-crystal-woo-woo gibberish, and 2) If you are at this stage, you already know and can find more valuable interaction with my posts
Social media participant learning curve mind map
I put together the mind map below as a resource for people that are either going through this learning curve or are looking to help someone else going through it. If you would like to help build this out, please let me know in the comments and I can add you as a contributor. If you have something to say about it or have a question, please leave me a comment below.
I’ll post more detail about each of these stages and the points that go along with them.
Comments
Justin,
Two things:
1. From a graphics perspective, there’s not enough white space here. Keep in mind, if you’re going to evangelize social media, you can never have enough white space.
2. On a related note, the “mind map” hints at depth. What you want to do is keep everything as superficial as possible. Keep in mind, the typical social-media enthusiast is light in his loafers and is looking for that euphoric feeling of floating.
Of course, these suggestions may sound like “far-fetched-hippy-crystal-woo-woo gibberish,” but you know what I mean.
Sincerely,
- Amanda Chapel
Hi Amanda! I appreciate your comments, but I’m confused. What do you mean there is not enough white space? Was that sarcasm? I looked at your site and it’s wall to wall text. Whereas this site makes generous use of borders, leading, and margins. Am I missing your suggestion here?
I know many people approach blogging as bite-sized chunks of information, which is great for mass appeal. However, my focus is to provide quality, in-depth knowledge that you can’t find anywhere else. I expect that many will not relate to my posts, but for the few that do it will be information that truly inspires them.
Ok, so I did a little research. I think I know what you are and now “get” your comment. I’m touched you cared enough to comment.
Hello Justin,
I have a modest comment. maybe you can convert the text notes of the nodes in the mind map to nodes, making it more visible, especially now there are too less nodes in the map, you need to enrich it, you know it’s the nature of mind mapping
Wow, this is my first time I see a map made with mindmeister is embedding in another website,it’s interactive! To be honest, as a the developer of a competitive product MindVisualizer, I would say this is great for showing ideas online, although desktop mind mapping software like MindVisualizer is more powerful in terms of feature set.
Edwin Yip
MindVisualizer — Visual Mapping Software Leverages Mind Mapping and Concept Mapping Approaches.
http://www.InnovationGear.com
You know where I miss you the most is in video format. But that is my bias
I will have to find time to hunt down the book from the last post…
To expand your ideas into my sphere the steps you describe I have seen in the YouTube community. Yes there are millions who don’t get past etiquette and enlightenment tends to come after a period of going black. Many vloggers take a break from the info overload and come back with clarity. They begin to vlog not for the fame but for the love of the interaction. Whether you meant to or not I see this is your process as well, cheers to your new site it will be great
Edwin, to be honest I was recently introduced to mind maps and have only basic understanding of the concept. I’d like to hear more about mind map methodology. Do you have some sites you recommend?
That is very well put, Sabrina. I feel this blog is that period for me. I went through a period of not participating and I feel energized by the time off to refocus. I imagine that could happen a few times in one’s life-cycle of socializing online.