Digital natives vs. cultural natives

Liz Strauss always has some great advice for anyone finding their way around blogging and the digital life. (She blogs at www.successful-blog.com).

Strauss said something in a recent Six Pixels of Separation podcast from Mitch Joel about the role of experience in social media. Even if “social media” has only been around for a few years, at least on the Web.

That is, it’s one thing to be a user of the tools. It’s another to be adept at operating in the social media culture.

A digital native vs. a cultural native.

About 10 minutes into the podcast, Strauss says it’s not the skill-set you have, it’s the number of decisions you’ve made in your professional life – and learned from, for that matter.

“What experience is, is the time invested in having faced a whole lot of decisions. And so that by the time you get to, let’s say your mid-30s, it’s not very often that somebody throws at you a decision that you haven’t seen a similar version of that decision before… …you know how to calmly respond to decisions.”

In other words, you need experience with people. Collaboration and cooperation, I’d say. Leadership. Problem-solving. Crisis.

Strauss says cultural natives on the Web are “people who understand that behind the screen there’s a person there…” It’s not how fast you text, she says, for example.

I think it’s easy to “live” online, creating a persona of who you want people to think you are and show your knowledge of tools and use of them. That’s why there are a million social media “experts,” right?

But if you’re in business, social media should be an extension of the “real” you. It’s about real people, using the Web as another way to connect. For business and for a personal nature.

Use the tools, but understand as you grow professionally you also need to understand the culture of the why’s and how’s of making connections online. You have no choice but to learn as you go. Try some things to connect with customers. Fail. Succeed. But at least try, so you get the experience.

If anyone tells you they’ve figured it all out, no matter what their age or experience in social media, they’re fooling you.

Be cultural. Not just digital.