In the film Six Degrees of Separation two desperate art dealers proudly show off a painting by Kandinsky which is two sided. Donald Sutherland’s character proudly holds the painting on a hinge and describes the first side as “chaos” and then rapidly rotates to the second side, contently saying “control.” This is repeated a number of occasions, faster and faster to illustrate the contradictions in the experience of the art. Pretty pretentious but it is a remarkably good metaphor for the world of social media. Much like art can be seen at multiple levels social media has multiple levels too. To properly understand it we need to acknowledge the components we have to interact and play with.
Stupid start point but this question is increasingly asked of us as marketers look to fully understand or expand their marketing investments for next year in social media. There is no choice but to try a social media strategy because for it to work we need to learn and learn fast about what it takes for it to catch on. Theory is fine, but practice is a lot better. The problem becomes what resources are really needed to make experimentation as low risk as possible and as hopefully learning-oriented and achievable as possible.
Some of this posting will agitate those experimenting with new media because I am going to talk about the need to think about measures. The reason why it will irritate some - maybe many - is that to make a commitment to social media in budget-pressured environments we need a slightly cavalier or entrepreneurial attitude, i.e. let's get on with it and measurement discourse will distract. Without some sense of metrics we will be doomed to just be a start up form of media - plenty of energy, lots of anecdotal facts but no structure for scaling.