A Social Media Behavioral Model

The virtual digital life is conversation through technology. We're not speaking. We're thinking and saying it in words. Our expression is feeling and emotion in writing. The inflection of the voice is not heard but words move ideas. As we read we react and respond. Our thoughts and feelings intermingle in the digital conversations.

The word technology originates from the Greek word techne meaning "art, skill and cunning of hand." Technology is the knowledge of the techniques involved in methods and processes of making machinery. Just about everything we use has a technical process.

Someone implemented the technology to make the thing usable. Thank goodness they did.

Philosophical debates propose technology will worsen the human condition not improve it. Let's not blame technology for our human traits good or bad. Robots won't ever replace the essence of human interaction. It takes a human to program the robot. The robot is only as good as it's programmer.

Every interaction with technology has a human response from the generator to the operator.

Are You Digital and Media Literate?

These days this is a hot topic around the water cooler. Educators write papers. Marketers analyze daily changes in data statistics. The stress of information overload is driving people into burnout.

Human nature can't keep up with technology. It shouldn't have to.

Do you really drop everything because someone predicts:

• The end of the PC
• The end of money
• The end of life as we know it
• The end of the tablet
• The end of libraries
• The end of books in print

Aren't you tired of doom and gloom media hype? 

The doom: the world is really in bad shape, everything is falling to pieces. The financial crash is coming... it's really the end. You have been warned. Now we are warning you again... well, if you do a calendar check, they ran the same ad last year.

The hype: mediate for five minutes and change your life.
Healthy hype: the new macaroni and cheese is organic, gluten free, and imported from Italy.

Must do hype: if you do these two things, you don't have to do anything else. That's all it takes and then tomorrow we'll show you the three most important things that every person should do.

Communication is still communication. When we appreciate behind every keyboard is a human being with feelings, then we are going to start a new behavior model of social media. Every action we take results in someone else's response.

It's a matter of simple respect for the other person. Not a demand, or a sale, or a bargain, or get it now while supplies last.

People are changing. Young, old, middle age, millennial, teenager, baby boomer, mid-life crisis men, women, seniors, no one fits the typical mold anymore.

The pressured undercurrent of social media is driven by marketers who are losing the thread of meaningful connection with people. Hype can be insulting a real turn off.  Each person shapes their experience with social media the way they want it, unsubscribe, delete or block.

Isn't Social Media Supposed to be Social and Conversational?

Why must we operate in a tier system of exclusivity? A hierarchy of social status based on how much money you spend and who you know, with an online measurable status, or non-status. This actually deflates communication. If you don't upgrade to increase your ranking, you go unnoticed.

Where does that leave the social element of social media?

Social Media has become a sophisticated platform from which to broadcast a business communication. If we return to the original intent of social media it was to communicate and share information and knowledge. Now it's a noisy marketplace with advertisers furiously competing for the consumer's attention.

Life online is, LinkedIn the water cooler, Facebook the playground, Twitter the gossip, and Google+ the intelligentsia.

The Solution

Implement Social Grace.

Who defines the social media media behavioral model? We do, the people using it.

The social media behavioral model is about the real, the true and the authentic. Anything other than that is transparently obvious. The consumer doesn't buy into it.

The old gives way to the new and different... don't you love it!