Hands down writing is my favorite aspect of working in public relations. There is definitely an art to crafting each detail of your brand/product/service in a press release and then pairing down the release into concise a pitch letter that you hope will pique editor interest — man, I love it. It’s like a game. Will they open the attachment based on my pitch? Will they respond? Will they remember when I follow up with a phone call? Place bets now…
…and then…there it was. The noose around the neck of broadcast and print media, and may have very well killed the art of language (at least the way some of us think of it…that Shakespearean mumbo-jumbo). Yes, that’s right folks, the buzz word we all revolve around….ready?
Social media. SURPRISE! Sexy and sleek, and requires no more than 140 characters. And it’s made me the laziest writer in.the.effing.planet.
Is it just me? Am I the only one that has been pulled in by the seduction of brevity? Real-time web has forced individuals to constantly engage with social media and update on-the-go easily from their smart phones. Which, as you probably know, is exhausting work. No wonder we’ve become so lazy. E-mail, text, AIM, Twitter, Facebok conversations from mobile devices has created these casual/lazy conversations. 75 million iPhone users in the United States are automatically excused for their bad grammar (thanks to Apple) in each of their e-mails “Sent from my iPhone.” A blatant excuse for poorly typed e-mails. And we’ve come to accept it. And you know what? I’m okay with that. Because it means I’m staying engaged online…I’m working to stay in “the know” and that means trimming down my time spent in other areas, like the lengthy e-mail department.
Some “social media experts” or active online (the ones that are “the know”) personalities recognize brevity for what it is…a necessity. They’ve played on the necessity by spicing up their smart phone e-mail tags with a hint of their personality (which, I mentioned before is sometimes difficult to translate online). Take Peter Shankman who tags his e-mails (which when sent on-the-go the body rarely top 3 to 4 sentences in length), “Sent from my Global Phone – probably while walking down the street, so please forgive errors and brevity.”
I’m not saying it’s not important to put thought into the e-mails and tweets that you develop, I’m just saying you’ll just have to be craftier to make sure that everything you want to say to editors can fit in 140-characters. Grammatical errors? Seem more accepted by media. Well, at least outlets you engage with in social networks, and have created relationships with. THAT’S what excuses the structured pitch letters and long press releases — an online network and community built with real-time updates. A network where you and your media contacts can come and find information they trust and respect. Regardless of the length of that information, whether it’s 498 words (like this blog post) or a 140-character tweet, THAT is what I call art.
140 characters have killed more than language. People use these media to say virtually anything, at anytime. People are constantly using the “look at me!” approach with SM. How many tweets a day do you get (especially if you follow the active SM spokespeople types) that read like “going to SFO on my way to [enter conference name here]!”, “I just presented this killer strategy to xxxxx!”,”I can’t believe I ate all of that xxx”, and so on. These are things that most people would not consumer their day communicating to acquaintances, especially those they probably have not met and yet SM now gives permission, actually no, gives purpose to communicate the minutiae of daily life, 80% of which 80% of your ‘followers’ don’t care about.
I would like to see more thought (and better language usage) instilled in all of these media for them to actually be relevant for the long term.
Have you ever seen the movie, ‘Idiocracy’? We’re totally heading there. If you haven’t seen it, it basically says humans will get dumber, while technology gets way smart. It’s hilarious, but scary at the same time…
I.love.writing.
I guess I’m on the fence here because I come from a journalistic background where I always tried to keep things brief, but I also developed into a copywriter as I moved into the workplace.
If I had to choose whether my news these days was quick or correct (in the grammar/spelling sense), I’d have to go with quick. I guess I’m going to have to stop bringing my red pen with me everywhere.
I’d like to add to Sam’s point about the “look at me” crowd. I’m guilty of tweeting inane details about my life, but that’s because I actually have friends who read my feed (read: people I know by first name, not @name). What I don’t get are the people who are clearly self-serving Twitter users and treat every tweet like it’s the MOST IMPORTANT news ever. No, d-bag, your Facebook fan page is not important to me.
Great piece, Jessica. Keep on writing!
This makes for a very interesting conversation topic, Jessica. I wonder if the telegraph had a similar effect? Or, was it so removed from the fabric of everyday life that it was simply a different language for those specific circumstances, rather than a force that affected other forms of expressing one’s thoughts?
It’s before my time, but I’m not aware of linguistic changes brought on by the telegraph. STOP. It seems like people knew that after the telegraph message ended, the special use of language needed to stop. STOP. People knew what they needed to do. STOP. Stop. STOP. Similarly, I thnk evry1 knows ths is no way 2 write a msg unless it’s a text or a tweet. But, that doesn’t mean subtler linguistic changes haven’t been put into motion.
I wonder about the telephone, particularly back when long distance calls cost a lot of money; did that change the quality of the elements within discourse? It seems like the art of language has been eroding for some time. (Or has it simply been evolving, and we’re holding onto archaic concepts?)
Were letters so much more carefully considered in past centuries because of the lack of immediacy? You’d need to put in your best effort since you’d have no chance at retraction or clarification for weeks. It seems like writing has taken on more characteristics of conversation as it becomes more of an interaction than a broadcast.
Now for the fun part: has language been drifting further toward informality and a certain looseness, for want of a better word, because culture changed in that direction? Or, did culture change because of technological changes that affected language? (I’m guessing some of each.)
What about the increasing use of profanity as a lazy person’s crutch for avoiding explanation or clarification? That must fit in somewhere. We’ve gone from saying things like “A walk through the ocean of his soul would scarcely get your feet wet,” to “He’s not just a f*@%er, he’s a motherf*@%er.” That latter statement is still an effective enough expression of contempt, but it’s not linguistic art.
I’ve heard theories that a huge contribution to the long decline of the art of writing came from when the schools stopped requiring Latin. It’s certainly possible; just as knowing more about spices can affect the range of what one can cook, knowing the roots of language opens up a much wider canvas for its use.
I place a lot of blame on our PowerPoint culture (with that product being more symptom than sole underlying cause). The “laser-focused bullet point” mentality rewards people for being overly simplistic. All too often we get PowerPoint Poisoning from an overdose of slides filled with fractured and butchered poorly-presented concepts, because so many people don’t know the difference between an outline and a presentation. And, from the tools that make it blindingly easy to give bad presentations, to seeing so many of them that you begin to think it’s the right thing to do, it’s a small step toward eroding the value of language itself.
Somewhere along the lines it became not only acceptable, but a bragging point, to say things like “I can’t spell,” “I don’t read,” or “Don’t waste our meeting time with questions or discourse, just give me the bullet.” In modern communication, words are often offered at an inverse proportion to the recipient’s importance. The Executive Summary is for the Executive, the rest of the document is for the lesser people. Spell-check is something the secretary does, not a concern for the Director. And don’t forget, in many parts of this country grammar and big words are for people who think they’re better than you.
I think things like that must convey a certain worthlessness, a disturbing lack of respect for language. I think it’s far bigger than a text-character limit and much older than Twitter, though those formats probably haven’t helped matters.
And don’t even get me started on what I think about what they put on billboard advertisements!
Sam I will agree that people use social media as a self-serving platform, absolutely, but then I would have to ask why you feel the need to follow them? If their content bothers you, because 80 percent of it is them self-promoting, and it bothers, why not disengage…unfollow.
But take this into consideration — social media is social. More often than not, in order to be successful, social media campaigns are humanistic. It has to feel real. The people that talk about themselves so often, and say so many seemingly asinine tweets/updates, are doing it so that their audience can relate. It deepens the relationship so when they do finally disseminate content of “value” it’s even more valuable, because it’s coming from a trusted friend.
Take the definition of social media (thanks to wiki): Social media are media designed to be disseminated through social interaction, created using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques. Social media supports the human need for social interaction, using Internet- and web-based technologies to transform broadcast media monologues (one to many) into social media dialogues (many to many).
Think of it this way. When building a friendship you listen to what that person is saying. When you’re pitching an editor you read their column before you reach out. Social media is no different. You have to observe the “social media gurus”. Watch what they’re saying. If they’re valuable to the industry and you’re interested in growing within the industry, then YOU HAVE to watch what they’re doing. Even if that means having scroll over “Speaking at xxxx conference” as it passes through the tweet stream. Because I guarantee you, they’re speaking at that conference for a reason.
Oh and Joe, this one is for you. http://xkcd.com/603/ You can thank my friend Daniel for that.
If social media annoys you it means that you’ve opened up the floodgates and can’t prioritize.
Each atomic unit of social expression does not require your full attention. Instead, cull your friends list to those most important to you and skim through their most recent updates. Interact only with the things that interest you.
Jessica,
I think you make a mistake here that too many are making in the social media space. The difference between Engagement vs. Media and their relative values. Engagement=relationship, media=messaging. I follow people who either I know, I am aware from the same business/personal community or finally who I think may add value to the overall ‘conversation.’ I expect that some of it will be fluff, but that in the big picture, the expected value of the relationship will be positive. As you know, I have un-followed quite a few of those who were just filling my stream with crap (we are talking twitter primarily here).
You claim that ideally social media is social, and as the name would indicate, this is true. But for things to be social, there needs to be engagement between parties. A reciprocal and participatory relationship. Many of the ’social media’ started out as this, but it has quickly devolved into a reputation/thought leader –> reader relationship for many people who think that is the space they need to be in to succeed with this media, it is a narrow and shortsighted view as the tools of media will constantly change. Additionally, there is nothing social about someone with 29,745 followers who is following 219 himself. That becomes broadcast, a very unsocial media.
You mention value, and value and social currency does not have to always be given at every quip, but it has to be a net positive for the relationship to succeed. It is one thing to tell your friend about getting 9 hours of sleep, or that you had the best smoothie down at the mall, it is quite another to tell that to 2,000 people, that is not sharing, that is fluff. Followers are not ‘trusted friends’, they are people who are paying attention to you and vice-versa, there is a big difference.
These media do allow us to have and define a voice larger than our immediate circle, and then to use that to represent ourselves and our ideas but I feel we actually undermine and abuse that voice when we create noise. As your friends at Mashable point out, 40.55% of tweets are pointless babble. Would we entertain a relationship with a colleague if 40% of what they said was meant to be ignored? it just gets tiring and in the end takes away value from the person and the medium overall.
As for them speaking at a conference for a ‘reason’, that is another rant I will save for another time.
Just dropping by here to mention to people interested in the topic to research the name Marshall Macluhan because it seems Al Boss either didn’t know of him or didn’t feel he was worth mentioning in this blog but I felt his answers to alot of these questions are crucial to understanding the impact of media on society.
Jessica,
Either I’m an idiot, or the point of that comic is that it is idiotic in itself. Either way, care to explain it?