Tools Define Culture
Author: Ed
Permalink| 4 Comments »
25 Feb 09
Unlike traditional marketing,
conversation implies that you know
your audience.
Social Cultures
Envision social domains as environments—geographical destinations with varying demographics, practical uses, and cultural inclinations. Hi5, CyWorld, Twitter, LinkedIn, Xiaonei, Facebook, Orkut, MySpace, and to a lesser extent Ning sites and IM aggregators, are macro-cultures with diverse market proclivities and subcultures.
Social Tools
The way we conduct ourselves within those subcultures is akin to a dialect or preference. The tools we use are the words and media we employ.
The tools we select reveal us as finish carpenters (Laugh aloud) or rough framers (lol). Grammar, the words we use, the language we speak; our topics (or lack of same); the videos, pictures and links we post; to whom we speak and who responds all combine to classify and define us within a given subculture.
Social Sharing
If businesses and marketers fail to invest the time to understand the accepted tools and nuances of the specific culture they hope to reach, they won’t be welcome on the ‘job site.’
As with traditional marketing, “Know thy audience.” But, unlike traditional marketing, conversation implies that you know your audience; that you live and work among them in a culturally appropriate manner, using culturally accepted tools.
That knowledge and those tools will certainly vary, domain to domain, culture to culture.
This article began as a comment on Beth Harte’s post, Social Media, It’s About the Tools Right? on The Search Engine Guide.
Image: tashland
February 25th, 2009 at 3:57 pm
Ed,
“…that you live and work among them in a culturally appropriate manner, using culturally accepted tools.”
Brilliant!
I think that’s the missing link here and a great play on words. When we (us, social media evangelists) say “know” we don’t me know the namesless, faceless stats and sliced/diced demographics.
We mean “know” as in you how you know your friends. You know about their wife/kids/pets, their favorite things, when they are having a bad/good day, what’s the last product/service they bought from your salesman Sam (and not from some CRM system), etc. You “know” all of this because you’ve had conversations with them online.
Beth Harte’s last blog post: Organic vs. Inorganic Communities
February 25th, 2009 at 4:06 pm
I really like your cultural analogy! Wouldn’t traditional media be more successful if it followed a similar cultural proficiency approach? Because media channels have and continue to become so fragmented, choosing an effective (and mixed) strategy has to be based on audience knowledge — or, in your more elegant terms, cultural immersion.
February 26th, 2009 at 7:37 pm
@Hetty4 Thanks for your comment. You sound like an analytics person at heart – with a penchant for qualitative metrics. :)
And what can be more qualitative than a dive into cultural immersion.
@Beth Harte Thanks so much for not only dropping by but leaving pearls as evidence you were here.
Yes, employing “know” as an interactive practicum, over “know” as a purely metrical observation, may be the highest hurdle for many traditional brand agents to clear.
March 23rd, 2010 at 12:42 am
Excellent comparison. I have to really agree with what you’re saying here, Illig. The great thing is that by hanging out in a specific online environment, without “talking” or interacting too much initially, really helps you to pick up the language being used, and hence helps you to not appear like a fool when you do start getting a bit more involved by asking questions and/or voicing your opinion/s.