When you know the words but don’t understand the meaning.
Posted on October 7th, 2009 in Leadership |
In the online world that I now inhabit, almost every day I come across a phrase that I don’t understand. There will be English ( usually) word or two that I know but which have been put together in a way that does not make sense to me. If I have the time - or the inclination - I will go off and find an explanation but usually I just move on and expect that at sometime in the future I will have an “aha” moment.
But I think that one of the main barriers to connecting with “new media” - see even I am doing it now - for many people is that they don’t understand what is going on and feeling excluded from anything can be a perfect reason/excuse for deciding that you do not want to be part of it.
I speak to people about Social Networking. I get the sense that those who attend my seminars expect this to be something new that they have to learn and right at the start I explain it is what we human beings have always done - it’s just that there are new tools available which allow us to do it in different ways and which give us a much wider reach.
So here’s a call to those of us out there who are using our online social networks successfully to tell our stories in simple language so that anyone - no matter what stage they are at - can understand it!
2 Responses
It will take effort to overcome the effortless local, regional and cultural colloquial expressions. I know I use them sometimes unintentionally and sometimes intentional.
“Ayuh’ is a Maine Yankee affirmative expression spoken with a nasal twang.
Words/letters may even evolve within social networks that are meaningless beyond their boundaries. Case in point, on Twitter, ‘RT’ is used to share the ideas from those you are following into your own network of followers. Thus the idea gets extended and may perhaps go viral.
As I say this, I am drafting my on Twitter Primer to serve as an introduction for a local professional organization. Twitter is just one more communications channel, a tool we use to facilitate dialogue.
That all being said, thank you for the reminder to ensure that my communications serve and seek to clarify.
Like you I need to remember to define Twitter terms when I am speaking about social networking for business - in fact I make it a “fun” part ( well I think it is fun anyway) but that is often the way to help people remember.
I wonder how visitors to Edinburgh cope ( even those who have English as their first language) with the way we speak here.
I suppose that it is important to pick up from body language that what you have said is not clear - and take time to explain…