Social media is NOT like a cocktail party. So, what’s it really like?
I say social media is more like stand-up comedy. Call it Stand-up Social Media.
1. You are on stage in front of a bunch of strangers. Yes, you have a lot of friends in the audience, but I’d say there are also a lot of strangers, who have no clue who you are or what passes for your sense of humor and have no idea if you are good at what you do.
2. It’s a one man show. On the social media stage, you’re out there on your own. The bright lights are on you. You sink or swim by yourself.
3. You speak directly to the audience in small bits. Just as the stand-up comic rattles off a series of short, fast-paced stories, jokes, and one-liners, you broadcast short blog posts, comments and tweets . The audience has no time for a long winded speech.
4. The goal is to please the audience. Yes, the comic enjoys performing for the group but their main purpose is to make the audience happy — have them cheer wild approval. They want to rock the house. To slay. To kill. In social media, your standing ovation is in the form of in-bound links, diggs, and stumbles. The retweet says “You’re the bomb.”
5. There are hecklers. Yeah, you’re cruising through your social media routine– twittering, blogging, facebooking– when BAM! someone hits you with a nasty reply or comment that translates to “You suck.” Or they are spray paint grafitti on your wall. Heck, someone can even throw virtual tomatoes at you. Ouch. Such is the price you pay when you’re on stage in front of a large audience. If you can’t handle a heckler and win the crowd …..
6. You can bomb. What if your material isn’t that good? Say the wrong things, post incessantly about how wonderful your company is (look, our CEO is on TV), retweet every tweet that mentions you and put on a spamalicious PR show and folks will unfollow you, unsubscribe to your blog or, perhaps worse, think you’re a company stooge and ignore you. And when you bomb on social media, the whole audience knows it. (Bomb at a cocktail party and it’s usually confined to a small group you’ll never see again or a good looking woman.)
7. You spend a lot of time on the road. Like comedians, you spend a lot of time visiting different venues– online, you’re at Facebook, Twitter, your blog, etc. You take planes, trains and automobiles to attend the various offline social media cocktail parties. There are BarCamps, Connects, and NARly events, where you’re happy to get a set.
8. There are few headliners and stars . For every Richard Pryor and Lenny Bruce, there are thousands who can barely fill a room. Success is not easily attained. Ditto social media. Yeah, you can have a multi-thousand looks-good-on-paper re-follow gang but would they buy a ticket to see you perform in person? You better have some act to headline the Inman News Connect.
9. Self-branding. In an effort to stand out from the crowd, stand-up comics develop a certain look and style to create their own personal brand. Some wear tweed sports coats, others leather suits. Some wear suspenders. Some are out to shock and play it blue, while others’ simply talk about what they are doing. Social media stand-up is all about building and spreading your personal brand too. Folks will sport cool avatars, have clever user names and even resort to shock and awe to get your attention. Yes, you’d like to sell your tapes after the show, but it’s more about showcasing yourself.
10. It’s tough to make a living at it. Stand-up comedy is oftimes gruelling and unrewarding. It’s hard to make a lot of dough doing it. Similarly, don’t count on social media to pay the bills, unless you’re blogging politics or celebrity gossip and you can make it to The Tonight Show.
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