When I see companies and organizations using marketers and people with “journalism creds” to spearhead their social media,  I have to shake my head.  Particularly when those “journalism” folks ,  over the past couple of years of the explosion of social media tools,  have shown ZERO consciousness of social media on their organization’s own web sites.  So here’s my question:  If these “journos” who are supposed to lead an org into Social Media prominence are expected to be good at it based on their expertise in “old media”,  and their talk re: how this is going to be “translated” or “transplanted” into a cookin’ Social Media program,  how does their actual performance over the past couple of years (virtually no attention paid,  and no attempt to present their own websites as “social”) give any indication that they will suddenly “get it”?

People who aren’t experienced in Web communications aren’t qualified by their “old media” experience.  That should be a no-brainer.  People schooled in a particular school of thought are often,  in fact,  more deeply imbedded in that “old media” way of thinking.  And without requisite experience LIVING and WORKING in and with new media,  their habits are very unlikely to change. And without a sense of who the “Net audience” is (ie. by being one of them and living amongst them for several years…like maybe 20 or so?),  they are going to continue to try to force the “old media”  (and “old marketing”)  down the Social Media pipeline.

I’ve been reading a book over the past few weeks entitled “Desiring the Kingdom” (by James K.A.Smith).  It’s not about Social Media at all.  It’s about the church.  But the point of the book is how we as humans are “affective” creatures.  We are “reached” by things which touch our senses and our bodies,  and that the “liturgies” of the church are for the “training” of our senses and that the rituals of liturgical observance are aimed at our affective senses, and form us much more subtly and,  in the author’s view ,  more “wholistically”.  The “information” and “cognitive” emphases of the church (“doctrine” and even “theology”)  are administered to us as if we are primarily THINKING beings. 

So organizations look at Social Media and attack it in the same vein,  as if it is a task of pumping information to a audience.  But as the name suggests,  Social Media should be , er…… “social”.   Which means,  it builds on something entirely different or more powerful than mere information.  It requires a “being with”;  a PARTICIPATION and interaction. And also as the term “social” would suggest,  it is not PUSH technology.  It is interactive.  It requires ,  as The Cluetrain Manifesto insisted ten years ago,  “people who speak with a human voice”. 

So,  just as the aforementioned book (Desiring the Kingdom) suggests,  we are more deeply formed by activities that happen in the space of the church than by information fed to us by that apparatus,  Social Media habits and “things that happen in that space” are more formative of us as “Social Media experts” than ANY degree programs,  particularly those  of the old school,  who scoff at new media.   The universities now offering New Media programs have encountered resistance from their “old school journalism” schools.  Much of it because the new programs make it a point to immerse their student body in usage and experimentation and “labs”.  They (the good ones) recognize that journalism (or even the old video production habits of “old school” production) have to be retrained.  There are certainly a lot of skills than can be useful in the new domain,  but the way we attack the task of “doing Social Media” requires more immediacy and ,  therefore,  faster, sleeker processes.

The people in our organizations that have LIVED this world for years are,  and should be recognized as ,  invaluable resources.  Nearly every sought after Social Media speaker out there will tell you early on,  that organizations should start by recognizing people already in their organization that have been out there ahead of them.  THEY are the ones who have been getting shaped and formed in the ways of Social Media.  They are the ones who know this audience.  They are the ones who can contribute invaluable insights for which Social Media strategies would most  likely work best.