Social Starts Inside

In preparation for this year's two CoSIDA presentations, here is an article that is the heart of one of the key slides: Your external message begins with internal communication.

It dovetails on my own point about having multiple voices speaking from the same playbook, or singing from the same hymnal.

What Tom Johnsmeyer's post makes so clear in the Social Times article is that people do not want to hear from institutions, they want to hear from other people. They will accept that the ticket manager, the facility director, the basketball coach, the media contact are all taking the "party line" -- but they want a face and a personality to relate to in accepting that official information.

Look, do you like form letters? Why would it be acceptable to have unlabeled, or "branded" messages? Is it less of a formula communication if it comes via text message?

The article gets to an inverted McLuhan moment: the message is more important than the medium. Just because it came on Facebook doesn't magically make it social. Plastic is plastic, and people want to relate with your genuine people and their expertise.