It may seem a bit self-serving for a social media consulting practice led by a former political consultant to argue that it takes a career in political discourse to truly understand social media, and make it work for a client.  Guilty as charged.  But it’s true.  Here’s why.

First, the cliche.  Old media is a one way street.  Buy the ads, pay for the PR, watch your message go out, unhindered, and measure the ROI in sales.  Today, the media talks back, in a sea of countless voices, large and small.  Corporate messaging has precious little experience of two way conversation with customers, let alone a vast cloud of them.

In political discourse, the messenger has been talked back to from the first day an early Athenian asked for the first vote ever cast.  And not just from voters.  A political messenger is engaged by opponents, constituency groups, media itself, across a complex landscape that must be navigated successfully to win more “customers” than the competition. The “ROI” is measured by a date certain, a declared winner, and a declared loser.  High stakes indeed.

In this chaotic engagment, the only survival strategy resides in authenticity.  An audience’s first whiff of inauthenticity builds a foundation for the next, until the message is discounted by a function of the number of times it is seen to be so.   Pile up enough inauthenticity and the political messenger loses “customers” over time.  Most political messengers can’t keep up, often to our universal amusement.

Survivors of this brutal process know that maintaining authenticity over time does not end.  It is a constant endeavor in preparation for some future unforeseeable opportunity to leverage the accumulated value toward change.  The “social media” of political discourse is not the means, nor the end, but the definitional nature of this beast.

To create a “social media” corporate tool box, from which companies pull this tool or that, in order to realize this marginal ROI or that, is missing the boat.  Social media is not a tactic, a strategy, or a tool.  Social media is the atmosphere in which companies now conduct business, with rules which most closely resemble the rules of discourse among people – no rules.

But within this new environment lies great opportunity.  In political discourse, the successful navigation of a “social media” environment has held, for the entirety of human history, the power to change the world.  How will your company navigate this environment?  And what will this new environment do for – or to – your bottom line?

We’ve been providing that navigation for quite some time.  Welcome.