Educate, don’t Intimidate

A few weeks ago, I found out that a comedic actress I really like had joined Twitter. I immediately followed her and realized her TwitterStream was comprised of about 50 messages to see her new movie. I saw a lot of backlash from other Twitter and Facebook people.  I was a little irritated but decided to keep following her. Here’s why:

When I was 14, I moved from California to Nebraska. I knew no one, save my family and had no attended the junior high. Essentially, I started high school as a complete newbie. But I wasn’t worried. A military brat, used to frequent transfers, I’d learned to make friends quickly, If I could handle L.A. then I could handle Omaha. So my very first day, I set about charming everyone (or so I thought) and when gym period started, I secretly whispered “Yes!” as at least 7 or 8 of the really popular kids were in my class. And I KNOW Mark the hottie was checking out my legs.

So when it was time to do our timed 40-yard dashes, I was ready to wow ‘em. And I did, by racing across the gym so incredibly fast that my feet couldn’t keep up. I tripped, somersaulted and skidded to a stop, blinking at the lights overhead, realizing I had just killed any hope I had of being a high-school superstar.

So therein you find my tolerance and empathy for folks who maybe don’t know quite what they’re doing in social media yet. AND THAT’S OKAY! Yes, it’s really easy to be snarky and biting about auto-dms or misuse of twitterfeed, and there is certainly a time and place to tell quasi-spammers and hyperpromoters to shut their tweethole, but there is also a time to give people a chance, and maybe even a second chance if they do something dorky and dumb the first time.

We’re around social media so much and bombarded with articles on how to do it right from practically every perspective that sometimes we forget that this is a very new thing for the majority of people. And you might have even done something incredibly stupid when you started, just fewer people were around to see it.

Nice ways to tell someone they’re doing it wrong:

1) DM them privately
2) If you know them, call them
3) Post “how to” articles in the hope they’ll check them out
4) Give them time. If they’re cool, they’ll figure it out.

It’s easy to call someone out and point and laugh at social media gaffes but it’s not educational and it doesn’t really help anyone. The scary thing about social media is it gives some people a lot of distribution power very quickly. If you’re not careful about how you wield that power and influence, you can unwittingly (or wittingly) damage someone who’s just trying to figure it all out.

In regards to the actress, she eventually (in less than a week) got the hang of it all and starting saying funny stuff and posting pictures of her hot acting friends. So…I win.