Burn Your Social Media Bridges

I am here to tell you today that I am getting ready to burn my bridges. Yep. Scary shit. I am foraging for kindling, and stacking my logs. I am going to burn my social media bridges. Not to cut myself off, but to strengthen who I have with me. And to give myself the vision and confidence to see who is for real and who is simply pretending.

Social media is a new world and one that is rapidly coalescing. Here in New York City, the social media community is still rather intimate. One sees a lot of the same people over and over. Perhaps a little too much?

I generally like and appreciate the social media community in New York City. One finds a lot of intelligent, forward thinking people. We are a broad community who have come to the church of social media in a variety of ways. Some come mobile advertising, some are agency people, many are purely tech. We have entertainers, comedians, future politicians. We have artists and musicians. We have critics and journalists, we have salespeople and comptrollers. I myself am a former banker. For me, social media is enabling me to be creative about customer service, the philosophy behind delivering quality content and activating other people creative streaks. Teaching people is what I love most for now. Teaching myself is a close second.

The Dangers of Over Acceptance

But there is a tremendous amount of groupthink occurring. It brings me back to something that I was told at the Digital Somethings party during social media week. A foundational member of this very community, a brilliant mind really, said that social media, and everything it entailed, the buzzwords, the philosophy, the intensity, was just a passing fad. This person expected the hype to die down in a matter of months.

In just the two months that have passed since that time, I can see the wisdom in that statement. I have detected a cooling of social media arrogance. This is a good thing, because although social media has much to offer our society, our commerce, our communication, our culture, it is not the panacea that many want it to be.

It is just another tool in a very complex kit.

Burning Bridges Isn’t All Bad

There are people in the social media community, just like in any community, that do not add anything. In fact, there are those that play reductive roles. The problem with this is that the community is still small, there are lots of overlap, lots of personal and professional blending. When a community is just coming together, people are willing to accept all sorts of compromises. They don’t think or act critically. When they hear something that doesn’t sound quite right, they remain silent, or even agree with it, only in order to NOT be the one rocking the boat.

Well, I am happy to rock the boat. It is the contrarian in me. I am not here to accept or abide mediocrity. I say “no more.” We need to start challenging one another. We need to start calling each other out on our bullshit. Call me out on mine! I can’t help it sometimes. Tell me when I drift. Do it publicly and do it loudly. Say so on Twitter. Say so on my blog. Feel free to tag up my Facebook wall.

No more ambiguity. I am only interested in people that are doing things that they can tell me about. If you are a social media wunderkind, then prove it to me. Show me the clients you have and what you are doing for them. Be honest about what you want. I am honest about mine. I am honest when things go wrong, as much as when they go right. I am honest about when I lose a client, or fail to sign one I wanted. I am honest about the problems in achieving true ROI in my strategies and my plans for dealing with that failure. I am honest about money, how much I charge, how much I earn, how much I’d like to in the future. If nothing else I’d rather be known for my honesty than for pretending its always sunny in Philadelphia.

Just Ask!

Last night, at the #Twestival in NYC (I was given a ticket: full disclosure, otherwise I would not have gone) I was talking to a casual acquaintance, someone I know from the community. I started to detect some bullshit, so I cut the person off and just asked what he wanted. And you know what, the person told me straight up: they were interested in building their personal brand in order to leverage it for something better. A better job, a better group of confidants, a better set of opportunities.

Bravo! Was that so hard?

So to my fellow social media fellows and lasses, I say to you that in order to ensure that our community continues to build and strengthen we have got to start calling people out. We have got to disallow the preening and postuering, the posing that is going on in our community.

Because right now it is made up of people that are doing, and people that are faking it. It has taken me some time to get a hold on what is going on the community. Who is truly working and who merely talks about it. The one thing that I look for is for those who are honest about their failures as much as their successes. I simply don’t trust people who are always winning. If you aren’t failing in social media then you aren’t really doing anything. And therefore, I don’t trust you.

I’ll smile at you and greet you warmly. I kiss you on the cheek and shake your hand. I’ll listen to your introductions. But I won’t believe a thing you say to me, and I’ll wear my critical hat the entire time we are together.

There is a risk in all of this. I may get labeled as a curmudgeon, a narc, a snitch and a rat. So be it. It is what I must do. Because I am here for the long run, and I simply don’t have time for the bullshit.

Image Source: Eustaquio Santimano on Flickr

Tagged as: Building Trust, Community Building