How to really talk about (social media marketing) books you haven't read.

Why do we have buzzwords? What service do they fill? Why do so many people complain about them?

Every sub-culture and every movement needs it’s own language. It doesn’t matter if it’s an art movement, a political party or a fortune 100 company. Having a unique language creates a sense of community and servers as a way to keep others out.

This is actually a very important part of community development. We may complain about it but it’s necessary.

Over the last five or so years the community fought and complained about these buzzwords. That was a natural part of community forming. The language and the terms were being developed to fit how the community saw the space. But today we’re seeing a new kind of problem arise.

The problem is that as we continue to enter the main stream, early majority,  mass market phase of social media other people start to adopt the terminology. People with little understanding of the terms or meaning want to appear as memebers of this community. Yes I’m speaking of the ever popular, self proclaimed “social media expert.”

This is probably the most hated entity to the community. Other communities use terms like “poser,” “faker,” or “wannabe.” Social media is not the only community to experience this. Remember “wiggers,” white people trying to “act black”? Any subculture that moves into the main stream experiences this.

So what do you do about it? You can get really really mad about it. You can continue to change the language. We’ve already gone from New Media to Web 2.0 to Social Media. Or you can accept that it’s going to happen. Ignore the posers and continue to work for the common goals that bring a community together.

Too often we get so wrapped up in keeping our little community unique and different that we forget that the common goals that brought us together were to spark broader change and that in order for that change to happen our little community would no longer stay little or unique.

Imagine for a minute if the Founding Fathers had stayed a small group and complained when other “posers” started having their own tea parties.

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