You are the lens through which your online community will view your content.
There is so much more to a message than just the message. Many communication campaigns fail before they’ve hit the page because they are solely focused on the message and not on any of the lenses through which that message is received and perceived.
In many cases, the lenses are far more important than the facts.
Let’s consider almost every single political campaign since the dawn of politics. Uprisings are not new and revolts didn’t begin with the Rennaisance. For as long as there have been systems in place to control the people, the people have learnt to mistrust the motives of that control. Regardless of the facts.
If a politician announces a new policy (they are the sender), the message has to pass through a myriad of lenses (filters) before we (the receiver) will provide feedback; and these lenses subjectively affect the feedback. Some people refer to the process and how we provide feedback as our bias.
Some of the lenses that influence our bias can include:
- the behaviour/reputation of the messenger or people around them
- our feelings and past experience with either the messenger or the message
- the platform used to deliver the message (think peer-reviewed journals vs People magazine)
- distracting, diluting and diverting messages that compete (think adverts and competitors on social media)
- current knowledge on the subject of the message
- the opinions of those we trust
This list is not exhaustive, but it highlights some of the common filters that we apply when communicating with others. It’s ironic that social media has given us more opportunities to communicate extensively and authentically, whilst at the same time it has created more mis- and disinformation than ever before. You need to make sure your online voice is consistent.
This is why having an online community that you engage with regularly is crucial to effective communication for your online brand. Distributing content is one of the first ways to achieve this, and… your community will first view this through the lens of your online reputation. Yes, they will apply loads of other lenses, over which you will have no control, but you can certainly influence them. You can influence what they think about.
The theory of agenda-setting basically says that whilst we cannot tell people what to think, we can tell them what to think about (this is also the basis for nudge theory). Whilst governments and corporations have been using mass media to manipulate and shape opinions for over half a century; social media has given every individual access to this for the last two decades.
Your personal brand is important. It’s the lens through which your online community will view your content. This is where you can shape conversations that build value to the relationships that you form with your community.
Success for small businesses is not found in massive advertising budgets, it’s found in good communication campaigns and public relations.
