I’ve been thinking about how we use social media. How can we characterize what we do? I have always used Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff’s Social Technographics ladder for thinking about the various levels of social media participation. I want to make it simpler for use in teaching others about social media.
Perhaps there could be as few as 4 levels of involvement:
Creation. This is the creation and publication of original ideas – text, video, images. Social conversation centers around ideas. Few people make the stuff that others talk about.
Curation. Curation is the collection of other people’s ideas. This could be a collection of links or a blog post that cites some great work. Curation usually happens at some kind of dedicated spot. Selective sharing even on a real-time platform is a type of curation. Most of us curate but we don’t think about it that way.
Conversation. This is the dialog about ideas. From written or recorded commentary to a simple retweet, input about things represents the start a conversation. Conversation, or the ability to respond to what other people create is the defining element of web 2.0.
Observation. This is the consumption of ideas or conversation about those ideas. It seems that most of us watch. Historically, observation was the core element in web 1.0
These categories represent a subjective continuum and most of what we do is some combination of each. Sometimes I make stuff, other times I talk about other’s ideas. I’m definitely a curator. The vast majority of my social time is spent listening.
What’s so striking to me about the Forrester ladder: It all starts with somebody’s creation. It’s been said many times before: Ideas and their embodiment represent a type of currency in the attention economy. Good, original ideas create powerful conversation. The power of the collection and discussion of those ideas shouldn’t be underestimated, however.
Perhaps a simple sequence could be: Listen, talk, collect, and create.
This eliminates 3 levels from the original ladder and may be simpler to describe to a physician audience. What am I missing?
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A simple sequence, yes, but quite accurate, I think. My own experience with social media falls right along those lines.
Listen: spent a year on Twitter before ever sending out a tweet
Talk: After a period of time, I felt comfortable enough to start engaging in conversations on Twitter, Linkedin, blog comments, etc
Collect: Informal curation via Twitter; started a blog as an extension
Create: Quickly realized I wasn’t going to be satisfied merely using my blog to collect links, and started using it to create my own content
Whenever I am talking to people who are reluctant to engage in social media, I try to convince them to at least create an account and just observe or listen for awhile. The sequence you have outlined here is a great simple wait to describe the levels of involvement.
I’ll echo Derek’s thoughts on this one.
My own journey into the healthcare/social media space followed pretty much the same path. Using our platform to listen, I first concentrated on finding relevant conversations. I eventually got the courage to start joining in discussions and after a while started figuring out where the best content was coming from. And thus began the retweeting of the best articles and quotes I could find (curation), and finally started contributing healthcare centric content for our own blog. You’ve hit the nail right on the head in terms of the flow of social media participation.
There is nothing wrong with a bit of social media “lurking” for a while. It lets a newcomer to the social space get a feel of the room, find the more influential voices and get a feel for the conversational style of the community.
Cheers
Jason Boies
Radian6 Community Team
@Radian6
Damn, I just realized I did the same exact thing when I started Facebook. But I’m still like that with facebook at times and the reason why is because facebook has turned into a childish thing. I don’t even think I can even go on it anymore and not get pushed away.
Bryan, your new ladder falls into the category of things that are “stupid simple.” (One of my favorite categories, personally.)
While the Social Technographics ladder categorizes types of social media participants, your simple sentence quite succintly defines their participation activities. It seems easier to incorporate into thoughts on how to address social media use by defining the use versus defining the user.
I’m not sure which I like better: the Creation-Collection-Converstaion-Observation version or the Listen, Talk, Collect, Create sentence. (The latter is perhaps a bit easier on the memory banks.)
Nice Creation.
Like – RT – 1+ –
Social Media and regular socializing are very similar except for the fact that it allows people who are normally nervous around people to freely talk. So you have to realize that of course it would be centered around creation because how much of the internet is repetitive? New content is what drives human curiosity to push forward and delve through the internet looking for it.
Spot on!
I like this very much. Is there room for “reflect” at the end?
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