In the days and weeks following the widely-publicized cases of police brutality reported from Ferguson, and elsewhere, there were quite a few protests that were covered in the media. Emotions were high. Tempers flared. Lessons were learned, or at least identified. Most of the media attention was on how the Police would respond to the actions of the protesters.
A sideline to all of the media activity were the parallels in social media. Videos, photos, and comments were fished out of the Internet stream from Instagram, Vine, SnapChat, Twitter, Facebook and paraded across cable news and web news sites with catchy headlines and eye-popping graphics. Stock video footage of kids on the street staring at their smartphones were almost literally worn out. Some of these “news stories” incited yet more cycles of concern and reaction. They key word here is incited.
Here’s where the rivers of new media and social conscience diverged. A lot of the media pundits, and their paid “experts” from the private sector, debated the impact of social media on public action and reaction. Their predominant focus was on the “impact” of social media on the public perception and outrage. But what wasn’t really ever mentioned was this:
Social Media posting does not constitute a protest.
Social Media can only be a protagonist for public action.
Sounds obvious, right? Yet when most people are asked how they voice their displeasure in some public issue, they often respond with comments about clicking “Like” or “+1” or posting comments in support (or against) a given issue. Here’s what that does to impact the actual issue in the minds of those at the center of it all: NOTHING.
The police officers involved in the shootings not only don’t care about your tweet or Facebook “like”, they almost certainly are not aware of it (or you, for that matter). What really mattered, and what invoked the closest evidence of change were the actual protesters walking hand-in-hand down the street in front of the news media, neighbors, and bystanders. Real humans. Actual people, as opposed to avatar photos with a profile. In fact, many of these actual protesters don’t have Internet access for various (usually economic) reasons. Word of mouth, and local TV and radio, are what moved many to action.
Whether you agree with one side or the other, or simply don’t care about the issue at all, doesn’t really matter in this discussion. What matters is the assumption that we can cause direct change to human affairs by using our smartphones alone. That’s like saying you can cook food by throwing wood into a fire pit and walking away. There’s a few more steps required to make the fire and cook the food. Social Media is only part of the kindling. If you really want to coerce “change” in some public policy, you have to get off your ass and do it. Literally.
Why Does This Matter to a Small Business?
It matters because many (okay, the vast majority) are convinced that setting up a Facebook business page is the same as “marketing” their brand. It’s only one piece. Successful businesses have known this for a long time. You have to attack on multiple fronts. TV, radio, Internet, fixed and mobile signage, airborn signage, catchy sound jingles, knick-knack artifacts. Whatever it takes to get potential customers to stick your name into one of their already overcrowded brain cells.
As a business, you’re fighting for a tiny space of human memory in the hopes it will trigger a callback when the time is right. When that person realizes a need for something that your business happens to offer. You need to make sure they think of your name, at least in the top three of their memorized options.
Not to diminish the importance of police brutality, civil unrest, or social media in general. But the message I’m trying to impart here is that regardless of your motives, if you believe social media alone will make things happen, you need to think again.
Michelle V. is a consultant in the IT side of web marketing for Fortune 500 clients in the northeastern United States.
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