Looks Like Antisocial Media to Me…

One of the cornerstones of my definition of what is social media is that social media features conversation – two-way interaction instead of traditional marketing which often consists of a one-way broadcast. There’s a certain type of social media user that really wants to keep things one-way… I refer to that as antisocial media. Here are some specific examples as photographers:

Blogs Without Comments

Comments are the usual method of enabling the “social” side of blogging, although there are a (small) number of bloggers that feel they don’t want feedback via comments. In the marketing world there’s Seth Godin, and in the photography world we have Scott Bourne at Photofocus. Even though these folks have some good ideas, they’re missing out on the opportunity to participate in a conversation. Yes, there are a variety of reasons why comments can occasionally become a burden (trolls, spam, etc) but modern blog systems contain anti-spam measures and the issue of how to deal with trolls is one which has been discussed to death.

Twitter Without Conversation

Yesterday I linked to an article talking about four styles of marketing on Twitter. Coincidentally, a couple days ago Nicole Young posted Ten Twitter Tips for Photographers. I disagree with her on this one:

4. Minimize your personal conversations. If all I see are random conversations between you and another person (or several for that matter) then it’s the same as being in an elevator listening to another person’s conversation when I have no idea what’s going on. Usually the “ignore” flag goes up and I move on. Replying to people is awesome, but when it goes on-and-on then your tweets are viewed as “diluted”. You want to try and maintain at least a 80/20 ratio … for every ten tweets you do try to keep about eight of them relevant to photography.

I’m in the opposite camp… if someone isn’t having conversations, I won’t follow them. I don’t want to hear someone only talking about themselves and ignoring feedback. Even if it looks like someone is having tons of conversations, you won’t see all of them. Twitter only shows @replies when you follow both parties in the conversation. If you’re following me, and send an @reply to someone that you’re not following, you won’t see that reply. The rest of Nicole’s tips are pretty good, but I think that discouraging conversation is the wrong way to go.

Are you using social media tools as mechanisms for conversation? Or are you perhaps being a bit antisocial in your usage?

Photo by Katie Tegtmeyer, used under Creative Commons licensing

These other posts might be of interest to you:

1. Social Media is about Conversation
2. If You’re Blogging Without Comments… Don’t
3. The Basics: Introduction to Social Media for Photographers

Tagged as: blogging, comments, Conversation, social media, Twitter