You’d think that, with the emergence of newer, better ways to engage the market, that marketers would have learned that the medium is no longer the message.  Particularly with social media…social media is not a marketing medium, it’s a communications medium.  The difference might seem minimal, but it is vital in understanding the value of the medium and in how to craft your message.  The consumer-centric mentality is and always has been the driving force behind the emergence of social media as a dominant category.

15 years ago, when the medium was the message, then the message could (and should) be brand-centric.  However, when the medium is no longer the message, then the message becomes crucial…and very much consumer-centric.  Social media promotion always presents an interesting dynamic…how to be true to the brand, while maintaining a consumer-centric approach?

I ran across a letter from CS Lewis- arguably one of the greatest literary geniuses of the past 100 years.  The book “Letters to Children” is a collection of letters written by Lewis to various children, answering seemingly random questions.  In one of these letters, Lewis address the fundamental concerns of language in response to a question about school lessons in English.  Lewis writes:

What really matters is: -

1. Always try to use language so as to make quite clear what you mean and make sure your sentence couldn’t mean anything else.
   
2. Always prefer the plain direct word to the long, vague one.  Don’t implement promises, but keep them.
3. Never use abstract nouns when concrete ones will do.  If you mean “more people died” don’t say “mortality rose.”
4. In writing, don’t use adjectives which merely tell us how you want us to feel about the thing you are describing.  I mean, instead of telling us a thing was “terrible”, describe it so that we’ll be terrified.  Don’t say it was “delightful”; make us say delightful when we’ve read the description.  [Too many adjectives] are like saying to your readers “please do my job for me.”
5. Don’t use words too big for the subject.  Don’t say “infinitely” when you mean “very”; otherwise you’ll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.

These simple guidelines struck me as a particularly relevant standard to use when crafting a marketing message…especially a consumer-centric message within the social networking medium.