While we’ve made significant strides as a society with regard to our collective embrace of social media, there are still those that cling to the impression that social media is scary. While certain manipulations of the tools may be be clumsy, I beg the question: how that is any different from setting up a DVD player, or having a solid understanding of which remote to use to turn up the volume and which to turn the channel; or, for that matter, setting your microwave on 30 percent power to soften, but not melt, your butter.
OK, perhaps I’m oversimplifying. Learning to use social media tools themselves may be as easy as melting butter, but using them to enhance PR initiatives somewhat more complicated … it’s more like baking bread that has softened butter as one of the ingredients. Heat the butter too much before you throw it in the bread mixture, and you’ll kill the yeast – your bread is dead. But that’s another topic altogether.
What is my point, you ask? I offer the following as my cryptic explanation:
If an activity is done by 112 million people, can it really be considered “difficult”?
Writing a blog
If 2,000,000 messages are sent using a particular social media tool, can that tool truly be complicated?
Twitter
If 3 billion pictures reside on a Web site, all placed there by people like you and me, does that make the site mysterious? Even if it’s spelled funny?
Flickr
If 13 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute of every day…
Well, I don’t even know what to say about that.
I know, I know. If you’re reading this blog, you know how to melt butter. My apologies if I’ve stated the obvious. But, in the arena of hot events, the butter’s melting fast, so I thought it best to say something.