Blogger and communicator extraordinaire Liz Strauss recently posted this question on her blog, Successful And Outstanding Blog(gers):
What Is an Online Social Media Conversation?
She discusses the four categories of conversations that include conversations about:
- Subjective ideas, extending understanding and awareness
- Objective facts, that unites prevalent views
- Other people that can be critical, competitive, or supportive
- Oneself, often indicative of attention-seeking behaviour
She proceeds by describing how social media conversations start and develop online, and then asks the critical question: What Is Online Social Media Conversation?
I have two very different thoughts.
First, online social “me”dia conversations require more than me. They require the “we” of the social “web.”
Second, online social media conversation is like a fine espresso machine with varying degrees of grind, pressure and pump used to fine-tune the taste and quality of the conversation.
Add a skilled barista, able to pull the shots directly into a pre-heated demitasse cups or shot glasses to maintain a higher temperature of espresso and you’ve got a great social community manger able to engage and communicate at a variety of levels
These social media baristas have acquired some level of expertise and particular skill in the push and pull of online conversations and their ability to entice, invite and connect a variety of people online even thou most of the words have been typed via a keyboard and digested through the written word.
How do you define online social media conversation?
As a coffee lover I couldn’t agree more with your parallel.
It’s also about doing some temperature surfing to pull the shot at the right time and when the heat is up!
http://coffeegeek.com/forums/espresso/machines/18247
Julius
@ Julius
Great addition to the parallel about temperature surfing to know when it’s a greatt time to engage in social media onlin conversation.
[...] media not only offers new tangible opportunities to associations for revenue. The ETHOS of social media communication also offers new opportunities that can reinvigorate the heart and soul of [...]
I can smell the coffee – nice metaphor!
What if we just heated water over here, and ground the coffee over there, and the two never connected? That’s how silos operate, how slow-moving communications vehicles make us live.
But with the lively, interactive social media atmosphere — we might get the makers of the machine involved, and the coffee importers, and great new products could emerge from the easy conversation between customers and suppliers that social media makes possible.