PS&L Blog

Learning how to communicate through social media is like learning how to speak Chinese. Let’s start with Chinese.

I’m (John Stapleton filling in for CB)  studying Mandarin online using ChinesePod.com with Jenny Zhu and Ken Carrol. Learning another language has several components. There is the memorization of word meanings, there is the different way to put sentences together (the grammar), there is the music of talking. All in all, a pretty complex puzzle. The other night I was lying awake and random Chinese phrases kept running through my head. Chang chang jear guh, Try this. Yo jig a ling, How many zeroes? I enjoyed staying awake to these ramblings because I recognized this as one of the steps before you get it a little bit more together.

Now onto social media. Like random phrases that keep running through your head, bits and pieces of information float through the Internet. Unlike traditional storytelling where communication is relatively linear, with social media we take the idea of story and turn it upside down, inside out and make it incredibly chaotic. Seemingly random phrases replace linear. Re-tweeters replace authors. Intros end up at the bottom and comments spin off into other stories. Yet, the more we study it and the more we communicate using it, the more we start to understand it. To the novice, control does not exist, but to those who communicate through social networks, it’s their adopted language. Like any language the more we study it and the more we communicate using it, the more we start to understand it.

I have no illusions that I will ever master Chinese. Still, I persist because I enjoy it. As for social media, it’s easier to master than Chinese. The difference is I choose to learn Chinese for itself. I have to be proficient in social media because it has become the way many people communicate.

Learning the social media language is not that hard. Once you figure it out, it’s remarkably like having a normal conversation. If you listen and respond authentically, you’ll get along. If all you do is sell and announce, your words will fall on mute ears.

The challenge with social media is integrating it with every other aspect of a college’s marketing efforts. Just like learning the words but not how they’re spoken will get you nowhere in China, using social media without integrating it into your marketing strategies will only lead to frustration and poor results. As with all languages, a willingness to learn and an acceptance of social media’s grammatical rules are the first steps to proficiency. You can go native when it becomes at integral part of how you communicate with your many audiences.