How We Really Communicate In The Electronic Age

May 29, 2012

Interview with Ed Keller, author of the book The Face-to-Face Book: Why Real Relationships Rule in a Digital Marketplace

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Mike Carruthers:
With all the talk about Facebook and Twitter you might think that social media has become the primary way by which we communicate – not so.

Ed Keller:
The overwhelming amount of word of mouth that takes place is still in the real world, offline, face-to-face, and while online social media is getting a lot of attention now it is a small fraction of the total volume.
 

Ed Keller, author of the The Face-to-Face Book, says when he tells people that…

An immediate reaction from many is, “you know that’s so interesting if I think about my own life that’s how I live my life but I just see so much in the press about the various online social networking sites, whether it’s Facebook, whether it’s Twitter, or whatever the newest technologies that come along and I begin to think that well maybe that’s how the rest of the world operates” - so they find it comforting.

And the things we tend to communicate face-to-face versus on social media are very different.

The things that motivate people to post things to online social media, the 1# thing that drives people is social signaling – it says something about themselves so they’re the first to try a new product, they’re attending a very cool event. When we turn to the things that motivate people to talk offline, emotional drivers so excitement about something or maybe something that you’re angry about – all of those are emotions and those emotional things are the things that we’re really focused on in our offline communications.

To hear the complete unedited interview, click here.