Social Media by the Numbers
Which comes first: the numbers or the words?
Story is part of a connective thread that weaves our lives
together in the tapestry of humanity. I saw this in the work of Esther Krinitz at the
American Visionary Arts Museum
special storytelling exhibit in Baltimore on a recent visit. She has literally
stitched her personal history through the war into fabric in crewelwork. It is
a magnificent masterwork of memory.
In the same way, my writing weaves together what is otherwise
a fragmented set of sensory experiences into a coherent narrative.
But what is story without an
audience?
We’d been feasting on Maryland crabs, fresh out of the
Chesapeake—with only a slight detour to a nearby seafood place to pick up bags
of the steaming, Old Bay-seasoned crustaceans. The litter of crab shells,
hammers, picked over legs and entrails piled up on newspapers in front of us,
as did the corn cobs, beer bottles and other detritus from a traditional summer
backyard picnic.
Satiated, fingers and tongue burning from too much Old Bay, my
son Ben and his girlfriend, younger son Ari and our friend Mickie visiting
from Israel settled in for conversation. Interested in getting feedback from a
generation of digital natives for my just-launched tweet-storytelling
experiment @OutofTimeMovie, I
observed how Ben has been busily following people on Twitter for his band Clones of Clones’s upcoming
release of a new EP.
Out of Time (link to post below), for those not familiar
(okay, for the 7 million people minus 30 some-odd who are now followers) is
based on a screenplay I’ve written about some wicked smart teens building Leonardo
da Vinci’s version of a time machine for the school science fair using modern
technology that old Leo could only dream of: GPS activation of a secret code
based on relativity and enabled by everything from Legobots to curling irons to
solar electrical panels tied into an iPad for activation. With some gummy worms
and energy bars thrown into the travel pack for a snack on the 500 year ride
back to Renaissance Florence.
The characters have developed a life of their own.
(Teenagers!) A friend suggested I start tweeting the story. Much like the way
Dickens and other authors of his day serialized their stories in London
newspapers, and soap operas became daily “stories” for millions of fans—based
on Proctor and Gamble’s innovative intention of telling a story while selling
Ivory soap—Twitter is shaping up as the modern medium for serial storytelling
with a potential worldwide audience tweeting suggestions and advances to
influence the outcome.
“Hey, Mom, it’s all an algorithm,” said Ben, which came as something
of a revelation to me in that moment of repose. Not that I am unaware that
search engines and social apps work by the numbers, but I had never before
applied that to gaining followers, connections and friends on my own social
media outlets. (Duh!)
I’d noticed that other people win by popularity, ubiquity,
or by being influencers. Their nodes grow through celebrity or controversy,
novelty or blooper. Not my claim to fame (or, in the case of the blooper, at
least I hope not!)
Having just seen Steve Martin and the Steep Canyon Band
featuring Edie Brickell (aka: Mrs. Paul Simon) in concert at Chautauqua and
noted to myself that the fabulous blue grass (!) musicians in the band sans banjo-picking
comedian Steve Martin wouldn’t stand a chance in hell of ever leaving wayside
bars in North Carolina, much less playing to packed houses on tour around this
here U.S. of A. with complete acoustic, lighting, staging and publicity hands,
I also understand the rocket boost that can come along with good old star
power.
Mind you, this is not unfamiliar ground: having spent much
of my career in public relations, I knew all about the power of the mainstream
media to launch (or fell) a rising star. And the news media—whether its local
news, cable, or the esteemed New York Times and Washington Post or TV networks
that made up the apex of my old PR hierarchy for pitching stories for
clients—had always been the holy grail for influencers and wannabes. My current
work in social marketing is all about gaining traction for the big ideas that
shape—or change—people’s approach to health, and spreading evidence-based
research as the foundation to substantiate positive behavior change.
An enthusiastic adopter of social media, I also use channels
like Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook to boost reception for the messages my
clients and I feel compelled to share. But I told myself that influence in the
digital age was different. In my world, it’s all about content. Provide
interesting, compelling stories, and the world will want to listen.
But that proves to be a slow way to win the race to getting
attention. And my new storytelling project will only really come to life once I
can convince people to join in the telling.
‘Coz it’s all about the algorithm.
So here is the news for digital popularity. Numbers beget
numbers. Does content matter? Well, yes…but first you have to get people’s
attention.
Which set me to thinking: what if mathematics is, indeed, the
foundation of being? Not a numbers person myself, the idea that we can shoot to
fame strictly by being statistically significant leaves me cold. And since one
of my personal obstacles in life—one that I am coming to the realization that I
need to overcome in order to advance soulfully—is the very idea of publicizing
myself, drawing attention to me (as
opposed to another person, a cause, idea or principle), it’s hard to wrap my
head around becoming this algorithmically
significant statistic. Playing the numbers game.
Why is this idea so hard?
First and foremost, it’s a reflection of how I was raised.
Putting yourself out there feels, well, aggressive. “Good girls are modest;
they don’t draw attention to themselves.” “Your husband and family come first.”
“It’s selfish to indulge your self-passion, -interests, -needs, -care
(fill in the blank).”
This may seem sexist, but as a rule, I
have noticed that men do not seem to suffer under the same constraints. The way
we raise boys to appear in society does not discourage them from promoting
themselves and their ideas.
Beyond the constraints of social mores and upbringing, I have some ingrained
biases towards substance over statistics:
·
I want to believe ideas matter. It’s not for nothing I trade in them for a
living.
·
Numbers may have their own elegance and internal
logic, but life is messy.
·
The number of people who are, in their heads,
mathematicians—and this might also include economists, physicists and others
hard-wired to make sense of numbers—is relatively small. In the world and in
the soul, words make meaning out of the randomness around us. Numbers included.
If this notion turns out to be all wrong, or at least
incomplete, that stands my world on its head. But that’s not all bad. Maybe
from here I will be able to tell the story in a whole new way.
So here we go in 5…4…3…2…
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| Up, up and away |
