Media Helping Media

Letting go of old media baggage is key to understanding and embracing social media. So says self-confessed digital immigrant Nalaka Gunawardene. He says ingenuity, intuition and imagination are essential for those wanting to embrace social media in order to communicate more effectively in the public interest.

1. Turn up

As Woody Allen famously remarked, eighty per cent of success is just showing up. You won't get anywhere by simply observing or critiquing from the sidelines. You have to wade in and set sail - for better or worse. And getting started may be a lot easier than you think.

2. Catch up

Once we join the planetary conversation, we need to do some catch up. Find your feet - and niche - in the online world. The Internet turned 40 in 2009, and its graphical interface - the World Wide Web - is now 20. So much has happened in that time - and a lot has also been superseded. You need to know what's on, and what's not.

3. Keep up

After catching up, we also need to keep up - at least with the mega trends. Large companies like Google - as well as hundreds of individual geeks - keep releasing new applications frequently, many for free use. Popular websites (such as Wired, Mashable and their local equivalents) help us navigate through these depths and currents.

4. Give up

Next one is harder. We have to give up our baggage of old habits and attitudes picked up over the years. For many digital immigrants, leaving the comfort zone of paper was scary enough. How can we let go of complete control over our communication products and processes? But that's just what the social media demands. It's not a choice, but an imperative.

5. Ease up

It's also helpful - though not quite essential - if we are less glum, prim, exacting and academic in how we relate to others in social media. In short, ease up, mate. There are some basic norms for online behaviour, but crusty intellectuals or matronly bureaucrats don't gain much traction. Keep things short, focused and simple. And hey, it's okay to be funny, cheeky and irreverent.

6. Shut up

Conversations in this realm can last for weeks, months or longer. Some topics and discussions tend to have 'long tails'. When we start something online, we have to be clear when to engage, with whom and how. Equally important is knowing when to shut up. (A bore is a bore, offline or online).

7. Cheer up

And if all this is making you feel dizzy, just cheer up: there are no real experts in this field. No one is an authority. Everything is 'in beta'. We are all learning by doing. Neither is there a definitive road map to the social media world. In fact, in this partly undiscovered country, there is plenty of scope to explore, innovate and be original.

But beware: social media can be very time-consuming and even addictive.



[important color=green title=Nalaka Gunawardene]Trained as a science writer, Nalaka Gunawardene is an active blogger and tweets @NalakaG. Gunawardene is Director and CEO of TVE Asia Pacific. He is always looking for ways to use the web and social media to communicate in the public interest.[/important]