Social Media Police: How To Respond?

For the purpose of this post, we are referring to the category of social media police who police the grammar or spelling of those that they friend, follow or troll on social media. Some may also refer to them as grammar police.

Case of the Social Media Police

It's the year 2022 and you are on social lockdown; confined to your home because of the novel Corona virus sweeping the world. At home, you find things to occupy your time including staying connected with family and friends via social media. At the end of another long quarantine day, house bound, you logon to social media to share something interesting, inspiring or profound that happened in the day.

You are still online and suddenly a notification pops up indicating some feedback on your thoughtful post. It's a one word response of someone correcting a single word in your post...

How do you respond?

Response #1
You can fight fire with fire; let them know they completely missed the point and that the block and delete button is waiting for them if they keep it up.
Or...

Response #2
You can educate them on the process of communucation and point out that your channel (social media page) is meant for an informal audience, not their boss or professor. Then, if they still don't get it, remind them of your block and delete policy. Lol
Or...

Response #3
If you don't have time to waste on a Social Media Grammar police send them the link to
read The Process of Communication and The Context of Communication so they can stimulate their "intellect” somewhere other than your social media page.

Check on your friends this COVID19 season

A COVID 19 Reminder...

If you're reading this and you're a Social Media Police; be nice. People are dying in the world and others are anxious at home. We all need to use social media to remain connected. Interpersonal communication is a human need. Also, not everything you see online requires negative, critical feedback and especially if you could be wrong and be totally missing the point of the message. Let's spread the love and not the germs.

To everyone; stay safe at home and use the social channels available to communicate and be mentally healthy at home.


Ever had to deal with a Social Media Police? How did you respond?

The Revolutionary Social Media

The first social media article I wrote was almost a year ago and so I thought it was about time I re-encountered this hot trending topic. 

Social media is currently one of the most used, talked about, underrated and misunderstood 'things' of the 21st century. I just know that somewhere out there people are busting their brains undertaking some serious studies about the social, political and economic impact of social media. I am no expert but I just have to join in on the social media bandwagon by sharing my top 5 observations about the revolutionary Social Media!  

1. Legitimizes Stalking Before social media, 'stalking' was one of those taboo words and certainly no normal person would want to be caught stalking or be referred to as a stalker or worse admit to stalking! These days people have no qualms about it. It's just what we (sorry, they) do! Send someone a friend request, wait for them to accept, once they accept don't even say 'Hey, how're u doing? Thanks for the add'...psssh. Just get straight to work browsing though their pictures and scrolling down their walls. Nowadays it may even be recommended as affirmative action. For example, it's called 'Networking' on LinkedIn and 'Sliding In the DMs' everywhere else that a messenger exists.  Many a millennial couple has been formed this way. The worrisome type is the one that just blends in with no indication of their purpose for joining your network. They may like something everybody likes or worse say nothing like silent observers. 

2. Makes Everyone a News Reporter Who needs to watch local news, the radio or *gasp* read the local paper when we are all employed to various social media networks as news anchors, field reporters, weather forecasters, sports commentators extraordinaire? Seriously, we know we are doing or jobs well when the local news now looks to our tweets, status', walls and likes for news headlines. Social Media has really but a true spin on social justice.

3. Could Make You an Expert If you really calculate the time spent reading particular tweets, statuses and wall posts by particular people on specific topics it would be the equivalent of a liberal arts course/degree. Depending on which friend's page you visit most frequently, at the end of the year you could walk away being an expert in music, cuisine, wealth management, politics, it all depends really.  

4. Puts Ideas in Your Head From the ads, suggestions of pages and people to follow and even to the content shared by our friends/followers; your opinion on various issues can be swayed by social media if you are not consciously aware and even if you are. As the saying goes, you are the sum total of the people you spend the most time with and if that happens to be through social media then buyer beware. Be sure that you are being influenced by people you actually want to be influenced by through your social networks.

5. Invented Hash Tag Abuse Ok. I really wanted to have my five serious special observations to share, but I don't know what more I could say except... 'Anybody knows what happened to Google Wave?' #justasking #theyjustupanddisappeared #beenaskingforalongtimenow #seriously :D

A Letter to UI Developers

Dear UI Developers,

It doesn't matter how great, cool and kick-ass your invention is; if people don't immediately get how they can use it in their daily lives to solve the problems they didn't even know they had, your baby will get left behind in the cyber-app race.

So I'd say, invest in some solid communications, pr, marketing, advertising, a key message, catch phrase, image, case study, anything...something that tells us in 140 characters or less what the tool is all about, what it can do and how it is different from the others. It makes little to no sense to come out with a powerfully new and improved creation that you and your team have mastered but the masses can't figure it out or see the relevance. Cough...Google +....Cough.

It's not good enough to communicate it excellently to start-up investors and leave the masses hanging. That's your brand and reputation on the line right there. Create some user friendly communications to go along with the tools too...persuasive writing not your thing? Get some help.

You know, sometimes you really just have to dumb it down and tell us straight up all the ways in which these inventions can improve our life and time.

Well that's all folks...as a society labelled early adopter, I eagerly anticipate the next best beta.

Peace and love.

A Case for the Sims in Life Coaching & Counselling

For those of you who are wondering...yes I am referring to the popular EA game. For those of you who were living so far under the rock you don't know what I'm talking about...I can't help you dears. Please set an appointment with Dr. Google at the earliest possible date.

Back to what I was saying. Of course the thought came to me while I was playing a game of Sims 3. I thought to myself, "this game, with it's built-in parameters, is so carefully and intricately patterned off of real life (well a version of it anyway)?." What if it can be used as a simulation tool for people (not just students)  who really need to get a grip on their lives and learn lessons such as the importance of time management, family planning, working towards career and life goals, working hard in school, maintaining relationships, fitness, budgeting, paying bills on time, understanding how attraction works...etc...the possibilities are endless.

Of course, in this grand age of shared knowledge, stimulation and inspiration it's hard to believe that I could be the only person in the world having this same or a similar train of thought. Here's a recent post from EA about the use of Sims in schools through SimCityEdu. For more information about this amazing initiative visit the SimCityEdu site and sign up for their updates.

Have you heard of any other instances of gaming in coaching, counselling or in the classroom?

For more on technology and social media news visit Social Media Daily.

Skype Disadvantages

Photo courtesy of blog.cycle-interactive.com

Well to answer my own facetious question...the only thing right about Skype is that it burst unto the scene first. Since then, Skype has been struggling to live up to the expectations of first-born child in the Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) family.

Skype Issues

1. Frequent dropped calls. As if it weren't bad enough that one person has to turn off their video to "video chat"...on a good night don't even try having a long-distance voice call with a family member, friend or client.

2. More money for poor quality. In order to have a group video chat involving more than two persons you have to fork up the Moolah and that's still no guarantee the call won't get dropped.

3. Skype is no N'Sync so watch your Back Street boys. In other words be careful how you switch from device to device using the same account. Your previous chat history may never sync with another device;  for example when you switch from work laptop to home laptop or even from laptop to mobile phone. In-the-moment messages can even get delayed as one device receives the message while the one you are actually Skyping on does not. This even sounds confusing typing it...imagine in real life? Dios Mio!

Thankfully there are other notable siblings (read alternatives) in the VoIP family. One worth mentioning is the fun younger sibling, Google Hangout, on the infamously redundant Google+ social network. Quite recently I was asked to give a presentation on Skype. I did a Prezi and half way in the presentation I felt so foolish presenting on Skype so I started talking about Google Hangout :S... the notable attributes of which will be discussed in a follow-up post. So look out for that. In the mean time...

"What has been your experience of Skype?" 

For more thought-provoking articles on social media check out Social Media Daily.

YouTube Abuse

No doubt, YouTube is one of the superstars on the social media scene right now. That is why I must get off my chest a problem that has been bugging me. I recently did some research on the brand for MSL Worldwide  for Advertising Week 2012 and YouTube has had an impressive five year history. What makes the site so great is that it is a repository of rich and unique content 'for the people by the people'.
I really appreciate the opportunity to share but...

I really appreciate the opportunity to share but...

 It absolutely grates on my nerve when:

1. Half of a person's presentation is swallowed up by a random YouTube video - even if the video is instructional. Please do not waste people's time. Quite likely a person is listening to you to receive 'your' insight on a topic; not the views of 'purplelollipop350' who uploaded the video. Once again, if people have ready access to it, don't belabor the video in the presentation unless it is an important lead up to your information.YouTube has an entire section dedicated to instructional use by schools where content is sorted by subject matter on YouTube Edu. If this is the kind of session you have planned for your audience, please let them know in advance.

2. People just pluck videos from the site for use in major professional presentations and workshops with no credit to the person who created it. Who are these presenters trying to impress, really? I for one am not. I also have access to YouTube and when I search the title of the video I can not only see that you did not create it but that you are one of 756,000 people to have viewed it.

3. Okay I wanted a third thing but there really are just these two main things.

For fascinating YouTube stories check out their FiveYear anniversary channel.
For more social media info check out SocialMediaDaily.

Drop a comment to share your own YouTube abuse observations.

The Real QR Code Fail

Not so long ago Mashable put out an interesting little article about QR Code fails featuring codes on cupcakes, codes on a headstone (which I thought was pretty cool) and QR code subway ads (#4). Picking up where this article left off, I have to draw attention to the biggest QR fail in the Communications industry and that is what I call the 'QR Solo Ad.' a.k.a (QRsad) It is a disturbing trend that early adoptors have rebounded  from but late bloomers are still (even as I type) contemplating. Below is a prototype of a 'QRsad' :
 

Can you guess what is wrong here?

 "A QRsad is one that features little to no text and is marked by the presence of a large QR code and the absence of a printed website address, email or contact information."

A QRsad is one that features little to no text and is marked by the presence of a large QR code and the absence of a printed website address, email or contact information, which means:

1. People without a smartphone (yes, these homo sapiens do exist) will not be able to access whatever product, service, event or idea is being advertised. If that was the aim then forgive my insight, if not then #fail

2. People who do have smartphones but do not know how to scan a QR code or even better, who do not know what a QR code is will not have access to whatever product, service, event or idea is being advertised. #fail x2

3. Let's just throw into the mix, the fact that these ads are often placed in inconvenient places such as inside the train and bus. So even if you do know what a QR code is and you in fact have a QR code reader, you  grab your phone to zoom in on the code but the train is going too fast, so everything is a blur resulting in capture not being decoded. #fail x 3

4. How about you reach for your phone to zoom in on a code and just when you think you've got it...*click*... you just snapped another passenger picking their nose. #fail x infinity

 The message is clear here. Communicators must never sacrifice what's relevant, effective and in the best interest of the target audiences for what is novel, innovative and trending. If you can find a way to meet both sets of objectives, the world will thank you for it.

For more on QR code fails read the original  post on QR fails. For other relevant social media articles visit Social Media Daily.