Take on Vitriol and Division by Being Better Marketers
Somewhere between 2011 and 2015 the vitriol across social media has become both stronger and more frequent. There is little debate that this is a reality of the social web, but is it a reality that we have to accept? Are the social media companies that enable this sort of poisonous rhetoric at all responsible for its proliferation? Or is it just a reflection of the coarsening of our culture? And if it is simply a side effect of something bigger than any one media company or platform is our only conclusion that we all just have to grin and bear it?
I honestly don’t know. But if we don’t want that to be the conclusion than we have to understand what is going on and act.
Culture Is Driven By The a Lifecycle of Attention
I follow as many pop culture icons across social platforms as I can. I do this because I want to understand as best as possible how communication is flowing today, what is grabbing attention, how the varying social platforms are being used, and to see if I can’t at least recognize the pulse of pop culture as it beats. Oh and I also have a bunch of children and feel it my responsibility to stay on top of all of the above so I can be a better parent. This exercise has taught me that current pop culture is as divided and segmented as it has ever been.
Micro-segmentation seems to drive the extreme. What I mean is that in order for any one pop icon to take root and be noticed they must do something ‘shocking’ and ‘outrageous’. But we should be clear about this, the actions in and of themselves rarely seem to be intentional, they just are. The fruit of such unfiltered, and untethered behavior is to draw eyes and ignite debate. No matter who you are, if you are under the age of say 70 you are going to have an opinion on the actions. And those opinions drive attention, and attention drives more behavior.
Opinion Is Gospel.
The debate cycle that outrageous behavior creates taps into the individual’s most cherished notion, that their opinion matters. Look, the irony of me writing that line in a post that is basically just my opinion is not at all lost on me. But opinion is treated as sacred by both no one and everyone all at the same time. We decry the narcissistic candace of consistent and incessant opinion sharing, but are quick to feel as though no one has a right to remove our freedom to exercise our own. It is today’s original sin of sorts, something that every single individual must be forced to confront and struggle with. To seek a place of comfort for themselves where the defense of their own opinion is concerned.
Media and Money Don’t Really Care
Media is about money. It is hard to argue that point. And the easy money is on the quick wrangling of attention. The harnessing of the fleeting moment in an effort to draw more in because that is how the money equation works. I get more eyeballs and my math works for my bottom line. Shoot if we just look at this image here from Google Insights we see that ‘click bait’ wasn’t even a term until middle of 2013. yet today we are bombarded with ‘you’ll never guess what happened next’ posts, tweets, and emails.
Long form meaningful content that demands more thought and attention is the casualty. The long form, deeply researched, nuanced, and impactful art of story telling just doesn’t exist anymore, and it is (ironically again ‘in my opinion’) due to the fact that it simply doesn’t pay. Click baiting content is fed by a ‘journalism’ that cares not to report the news to us, but to set the agenda for the news. Because if an outlet can set the agenda they get more links, more likes, more eyes, more retweets, more snaps, more pins, more impressions and sell more advertising.
The impact on us as individuals is that we are forced into where the media wants us, micro-segmentation. And this is not some tin foil hat conspiracy sort of segmentation, it is just a utilitarian reality of how media and advertising becomes more efficient. It just happens because that is where the most money is, in the ability to target and effect with ever greater precision.
The Future
I like to believe that I am a pragmatic optimist. That I’m ever hopeful but unwilling to wear rose colored glasses to evaluate where we are and where we are headed. With that in mind I’m hopeful that the next wave of social media and general media disruption will be to combat the cesspool of vitriol that fills our current social media landscape. Pragmatically, however, I’m certain that such a trend won’t be coming around anytime soon. And will never happen unless we as individuals that leverage media start to care about these things.
So as silly as it may sound I think business to business marketers need to lead the way for a change, and not chase the the latest and greatest social media trends by jumping on hashtags and behaving like some outrageous consumer brand. Rather we must take responsibility to do 4 things.
Be helpful first, last and always. We should never create content unless it first helps our target audience in some way shape or form. We should evaluate all our content from this perspective, and drive our revenue not from the numbers game that we are tempted to play, but from a position of service to those that we want to do business with.
Define Expected Behavior. We owe it to our companies and our customers to establish a social media code of ethics that is inclusive of all opinions but also crystal clear about how vitriol will be handled. There is danger in this because one man’s vitriol is another man’s sacred personal opinion, and we never want to lord over our employees with strict censorship heavy guidelines. But we have to find the balance, and we have to create a culture where our employees understand that their opinion ain’t nearly as important of respectfully and dutifully coming to work with one goal in mind. Help our customers.
Create a culture that transcends revenue. Culture matters, quite a bit. It matters more today than ever and people are desperate to work in a company that has one, knows what is is, and cares enough about it to build a workforce to embrace and advance it. If we are not placing culture front and center we don’t have one. Start there.
Talent acquisition is NOT transactional stop treating it as such. Closely related to culture because nothing pushes a company culture more than people. How do you integrate the two? By elevating the role of recruiters for your company and relying less on technology to do the job a person should be doing. Understand not only skills you are bringing into the organization but the person as well. You can’t do this through a keyword search of resumes.
The time is now to put on the new responsibility of our age. This, as content marketers, is our corporate responsibility and it affects not only our company culture but indeed American Culture.
What will you do to help turn the tide of division and vitriol?
Icon made by Yannick from www.flaticon.com is licensed under CC BY 3.0
