What you say still counts

In the social media tsunami, many of us are running hard to stay ahead of the wave. The overall volume of conversation is rising rapidly, as are the demands and opportunities to participate.

Like any new paradigm, this one calls on us to learn new ways of thinking and behavior. For instance, how do we best mine the brevity of the 140-character Twitter post? What bit can we toss in as our blog entry that will not just be something that says "me too"? How do we find the time to check in on LinkedIn and Facebook and monitor Twitter while carrying on our analog lives and not offending those we need to interact with face-to-face? How can we best use all these platforms to carry our strategic business messages and not just banal observations? How do we seamlessly weave them into our work lives to increase our scope and power as professionals?

We had best be thinking hard about these issues and opportunities: Like the telegraph, telephone, television and other earth shaking communications transformations of the past, social media is changing and will transform our lives and our organizations.

Canadian communications theorist Marshall McLuhan, (who gave us the concept of the Global Village) made famous the statement, "The medium is the message." Indeed, we are all focused on and grappling with social media as an immense change agent of our time.

But as a trained communicator, I continue to believe that meaningful communication is not achieved merely participating in social media. Meaningful communication requires both receiver and sender, and the transfer of content of substance in between, with feedback eliciting further transfer of information. Communication - versus noise and echo - still requires receipt and understanding. Communication (in the context of English, at least) still relies on subject-verb-object, at least, even if implied, to describe or request action.

Simply, even in social media, it's still what you say that counts.