It turns out that @AaronMSB, last night’s presenter, passed his youth away by playing a lot of jazz. While he may have missed out, by his own admission, on many other pop culture experiences, he’s now well entrenched into the social media scene. And he’s got an interesting take on it. According to Aaron, jazz is a lot like social media.
For starters, social media, just like jazz, was a way for insiders to share information with each other. You had to know people to get connected and then there’s typically a code or shorthand that only insiders know. This system of communication evolved with the addition of new instruments (in the case of jazz) or tools (in the case of social media). And, unlike many other types of music, jazz is very loosely organized, providing a low barrier to entry — virtually anyone can play jazz, just like virtually anyone can participate with social media.
Call and Response
A popular technique in jazz is call and response — Aaron demonstrated this by playing Cab Calloway’s Minnie the Moocher. In this style, an instrument or singer plays a line and it’s then echoed by another instrument or singer. This is really very similar to how we all learn to communicate. Babies do this when learning how to talk. We also do this in our everyday conversations — when someone is talking to us, we repeat what they say, nod, make affirmative sounds, to let them know we are listening.
Participate Now, Lead Later
Another important concept that Aaron shared with the group was the concept of space. In jazz, the notes you play are just as important as the ones you don’t play. In the world of social media, this translates into choosing your places to comment, repsond, and discuss.
It Don’t Mean a Thing if You Ain’t Got that Swing
Just as Louis Armstrong sang, it isn’t the melody, it’s not the instruments … it’s the swing. Translate that to social media … it’s not the message you deliver, it’s not the tools you use, it’s all about the relationships.
Pay Your Dues
In the jazz world, you have to pay your dues. You don’t just jump up on stage with someone and start playing. The goal is to slowly improve your visibility and get invited to play with the big cats. And this is true with social media as well.
How Big is Too Big?
At the end of the presentation, there was a healthy question and answer session, most of it revolving around Twitter (as well as questions on why all the questions were about Twitter). One of my favorite insights from the evening was in regards to how many people can you follow on Twitter? Is there a magic number? How many is too many?
The answer was multi-faceted, but can be summed up like this. First of all, those you follow on Twitter are kind of like a playlist. You may not like all the songs all the time, but the list gives you good content most of the time. You don’t always hear all the songs all the time, especially if you have it on shuffle. Your Twitter stream, populated by those you follow, is a lot like this. You may not read everything that is put out on Twitter, but what you are exposed to is generally stuff that you like.
But how many people should you follow? Some argued for the Dunbar number of 150. Others said it’s a matter of how good your “chops” or skills are. @mikechapman mentioned that he learned that @chrisbrogan is just a prolific writer and at one time had at least 8 blog posts written and in the queue ready to go. Most people I know don’t write like that.
So what does all that mean? Just like a world-class musician, if you want to get the most out of your social media efforts, you need to practice, practice, practice, be open minded, listen, and learn from everyone around you.
