How are you connecting?

Facebook and other social networks are great not because they are a good platform for near real time communications, but because it facilitates events like my 25 year high school.  The logistics of trying to pull together a reunion with many of the class members spread all over the US are near impossible.  Yet, it was the desire to reconnect that made using Facebook worth the effort.  Social networks and social media marketing succeed by connecting us in ways that are innate to all human beings.  We connect emotionally with a friend, a cause, a brand and that’s what keeps us coming back.

Prior to my most recent reunion activities I very rarely made any contact with some of my old classmates.  It’s not that I didn’t like them, it just that it was too cumbersome to reconnect.  I’ve written about the soul of marketing before and what it takes to connect with your audience or target market (more on that here), but what still fascinates me is that many marketers still attempt to use traditional methods on social media platforms. Todd Defren, principal of SHIFT Communications (as quoted on SocialMediaExaminer.com), put it this way “You are in the findability department. The marketing department is dead.”

So, how are you connecting with your audience?