We Need Social Media Interpreters, not more Evangelists

April 1, 2008
 in Social Media
. Tags: , , , .

You’ve seen it, I’ve seen it. People who deem themselves “Social Media Evangelists“. But are they? Really? I’m not picking on any one person, but a situation in Social Media that I believe needs to change.

To me, an evangelist is someone who is spreading the word to those who don’t already know about it. Otherwise, you’re just preaching to the choir. I’m not saying there isn’t a place in social media to organize and inform the geekworld, but we’ve got plenty of that.

There are people out there who are actually bringing in fresh meat. Rob Clark brought me in — he showed me that the community was more valuable than the technology itself, and how relationships are the glue that hold it all together. We’ve got too many new media douchebags, too many people jockeying to position themselves as experts (I don’t claim to be any of these, far from it), and not enough trying to inform the rest of the world how social media can benefit them. I mean think about it, how much more is the social media community going to monetize itself — let’s open it up to the world! A lot of ordinary folk don’t even know what a blog is!

I recognize it’s not an easy task. It’s hard to explain Twitter, and blogs, social bookmarking and other SM tools to your average person who doesn’t spend all day in front of a computer like we do. Thank goodness for CommonCraft, they describe themselves as interpreters. Yes, what we need are Social Media Interpreters, not more “evangelists”, not more “experts” not more new media douchebags.

What Can I Do? (including me)

Just like how we can all be social media marketers, we can all be Social Media Interpreters.

I don’t have all the answers, like I said before, I’m far from being any kind of an expert, but there are a few things I do and will be trying to do to get folks dipping their feet in the social media pool:

  • Explain how being social on del.icio.us and other social bookmarking sites can bring more value than regular bookmarks
  • Show off the interesting conversations you can have on Twitter
  • Direct friends to favourite blog(s) and encourage them to engage in the discussions.

How do you share and explain social media to your peers?

Tags: community, delicious, Social Media, twitter

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  • June 9, 2008 at 5:39 pm Shey
    What happens if you add a comment on a blog post (pre-FriendFeed signup) from the FriendFeed Comments plugin?
  • June 9, 2008 at 6:18 pm Marco (aureliusmaximus)
    we'll get there - everyone is finally starting to wrap their heads around what it all means (myself included)
  • June 9, 2008 at 6:18 pm melmcbride
    in addition to intepreters we may need some "creative direction" of use. most of us are still exploring these services as a child approaches a toy. we're fumbling through hoping to make sense of it. those who *have* made some sense of it, can surely help us to streamline our objectives. I guess this is the real value of the so-called thought leaders.
  • June 9, 2008 at 6:59 pm Shey
    I agree it does take some time to adjust and learn and understand what it's really all about. I just wanted to point out that the social media universe is only a drop in the ocean of people out there.
  • June 9, 2008 at 7:03 pm directeur (once was here)
    Even the creators of these plateforms don't know they'll be used, you can guess for one person, but not for crowds, that's why improving, tweaks, new features are
  • June 9, 2008 at 7:07 pm Shey
    @directeur Not sure if you read the post or not, but I wasn't talking about the technology.
  • June 9, 2008 at 7:08 pm Mathew A. Koeneker
    Shey is right-o. The Earth doesn't revolve solely around social media issues.
  • June 9, 2008 at 7:10 pm directeur (once was here)
    @Shey: I did just after I commented on melmcbride comment, actually :) and yes, you're right! We don't need evangelists anymore, I actually don't think we ever had the need for... Since IMO soicial Internet was way back before websites, since there was and still is a certain social-life on things like IRC, mailing lists, forums, newsgroups...
  • June 9, 2008 at 7:13 pm Marco (aureliusmaximus)
    @directeur which is exactly why these meta conversations are so important. this stuff is going to work itself out one way or another - I would rather see a continuation of the kind of compressed intensely-focussed conversations we are seeing here than another process that would be much, much slower. The PC became what it is today because of Home Brew groups and other similar micro-think tanks of individuals passionate about something that they knew has a ridiculous amount of potential
  • June 9, 2008 at 9:59 pm Dimitar Denev
    I completely agree that we need more social media interpreters than evangelist. In my opinion an interpreter will be the one who will find out what service will be useful for the others and what is most important for them. The interpreter has to listen and never to forget that that what matters is the needs of the others.
  • July 22, 2008 at 3:17 am Sarah Crisman
    Great post, Shey. As fun as it is to talk shop with new media wonks, I also enjoy teaching my 3D laggard friends how to use facebook :)
  • July 22, 2008 at 3:19 am Shey
    @Sarah Thanks, it's a lot of fun for me too, especially when they aren't too dizzy to get it :)

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