Following is a guest post by Aaron Bramley, a well-known advocate of digital media for non-profits. Aaron works as a Director of Digital Media for Ridgewood Associates Public Relations, Inc. and is a Co-founder of Lights. Camera. Help., the Nonprofit Film Festival.
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How to I rock the web? I don’t rock the web, I make the web swing.
Over the last year, I have developed a presentation that uses three jazz basics to discuss best practices for social media communications. Here is the first jazz basic that I use in my talk. Call and Response Consider this example of call and response:
Jazz started, much the way social media did, as a way to share information among a select groups of insiders. It was slaves in the plantation communicating with each other through chants and hymns. Looking deeper though, call and response is how most forms of communication work.
Think about babies. A child learns to speak by mimicking, or responding to, a call from a parent. “Can you say Da da?” Think about you. When you are in a conversation with some one, how do you show interest? Is your head nodding? Are you saying, “uh huh?” Eventually, this type of communication evolved from tribal chants by slaves on a plantation into what we now know as jazz.
The key to this transition was when instruments were added. Similarly, social media communication evolved from traditional communication methods when online tools became available. In the jazz world, by sending out a call and having it repeated by the rest of your band or the audience, you dramatically increase the volume of your call. In social media, by having your call repeated by your followers, you dramatically increase the reach of your message.
So, how do you get your messages to be repeated by other people?
- Participate now, lead later – Social media is quid pro quo. To make sure people are paying attention to you, re-tweet, re-post and respond to the posts of others before attempting to get your messages broadcast.
- Have a McGuffin - This is a term that Hitchcock used to describe something that drove the plot forward. A gold ring or maybe a pretty girl could serve as the McGuffin. Something that the character is passionate about. Each of your social media communications should have one of these. If it’s a tweet, for instance, it should drive toward a video, website, blog post, interesting idea, etc.
- Leave space – A jazz instructor once told me that the notes I don’t play are just as important as the notes I do play during a solo. Leaving space in social media communications is important too. With too many messages coming from one person, your audience is bound to tune out. For more, you can check out the slides to this presentation below.
