As social media moves into a more mature phase, there’s still a lot we don’t know about its usefulness to the majority of businesses.

Below are a number of short snippets, quotes and comments on social media. Whether they are valuable, insightful, to you, or whether they just clutter up your social media view is up to you.

On Social Media Experts:

You can tell your “social media expert” is a scoundrel or utterly ignorant if they use the phrase “They just don’t get social media”. The truth is that the expert doesn’t get social media, or how human beings work and is unable to come up with anything better to refute arguments or disagreements about social media.

Look At Social Media From The “Outside”

You cannot fully understand social media solely by being immersed in it. In fact, one reason why there is so much bad information about social media is that most of it comes from immersed people. The full picture is only available to people who can DISTANCE themselves emotionally and intellectually and see social media from the outside — as most human beings view it.

Hope and Hype of Social Media

Criticism of social media is received as if one had attacked someone’s religion. There are similarities. People desperately want to believe that they can connect and be valued as special by participating in social media. Desperation and Faith meet at the door of social media.

The Social Media “Friends” Confusion

In order of stability and connection strength, (strongest first) friendships/relationships can be categorized as 1) unconditional 2) semi-conditional 3) transactional and 4) User Based. Social media users tend to confuse these, and believe the weakest types of ties are actually much stronger than they are.

Being Heard — We All Need It, and NOT The Illusion of Being Heard

The psychological need or desire to be heard is so powerful that we are willing to pretend that our tweets and status updates are being attended to, read, and thought about, even when it’s clear that almost nobody is paying much attention. That’s why people actually continue to talk about the trivialities in their lives even if nobody ever responds. That’s one strong need!!

Social Media Growth In A Tough Time — People Reaching Out For Connections

It’s no surprise that the huge growth in social media use came during a profound economic and morale recession that caused people to lose confidence in the stability of their worlds and feel a strong sense of being threatened.

Customer Engagement In An Era Of Social Media

One of the prime illusions for business using social media is that it appears that “customers” are engaged by the company. It’s more accurate to say (if on Twitter) that people are engaged with Twitter, even if they are communicating with the company. In any case, the term is over-used and misleading.

Technology And Human Communication

Mediated communication refers to any communication between two people that has, as the carrier of the message, a technology (ie. computer, social media platform software). The more technologies and pieces that mediate communication between two people, the more distortion will occur as a result. Also the more complex the mediating technologies, the more chance of distortion.

More On The Illusions of Social Media “Friends”

The problem with social media is not that it results in redefining the terms “friends” and “relationships” but that social media users may forget that a “friend” online is not the same as a “friend” in real life and confuse the two.

On Using Social Media For Business — Do YOU Like It?

No matter what social media platforms you choose, the process of adding content, responding to people (some rather annoying), and keeping things working is often tedious and frustrating. If the people tasked to do this do not truly enjoy what they are doing, it won’t work.

It’s great to assume that the lure of money will keep you and/or employee motivated to do a good job, but there is no guarantee of economic benefit, short or long term to keep up motivation.

Want more thoughts on social media that will challenge your thinking? Here’s Part 2

Code: mxyzpickle