Which came first: Social tools or social attitudes? - SmartBrief

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Which came first: Social tools or social attitudes?

2 min read

Social Media

The top story in today’s issue of the SmartBrief on Social Media e-mail newsletter is this sharp little piece by Judy Shapiro that does such a wonderful job of crystallizing what embracing a social-media mindset can do for a brand.

“In the best of situations, the community is the inspiration for the company brand strategy; they set the pace and type of dance to be shared. More than that, in this model, different communities will inspire their own special dances that will need to be incorporated into the brand strategy iteratively over much shorter cycles than ever before,” she writes.

Of course, using social networks might make it easier to adopt that collaborative mindset. But then again, Pete Blackshaw does a pretty good job of arguing that these attitudes are way, way older than the technology we associate them with. Maybe these networks just woke us up to the secrets that marketing masters had been hoarding for decades. I guess that’s the social-media equivalent of the chicken-egg question — “Which came first: social-media tools or social attitudes?”

Has embracing social media changed the way you manage your brand? How? What’s the relationship between the tools and the attitudes of social media?