One thing I really love about what I do is the opportunity to travel around the region and talk to real estate professionals in their community;
And there’s nothing like a good social media marketing conversation to quickly peel through the colloquial layers and get right down to the local state of the onion.
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col·lo·qui·al [kuh-loh-kwee-uhl] –adjective
1. characteristic of or appropriate to ordinary or familiar conversation rather than formal speech or writing; informal.
2. involving or using conversation.
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I am so jazzed when I enter into a conversation about the dynamics of a hyper-local market place. The issues and concerns of our clientele, learning who’s considered to be ‘the players’, who fess’s up that they feel technically challenged, who has issues with the internet, privacy, and it’s endless array of sites, tools, applications, and how will I ever have time to do this?
Let alone the divergent concerns expressed by local consumers who act (or more often react) to the news and goings on within their community. We all have an opinion.
When you’re face to face in their environment, see their surroundings, hangout in their office for awhile and talk, experience their traffic, their economy, and smell the air; you get a deepened sense of the unique social fabric that binds them.
We live in interesting globally connected times and on the surface that implies we (more or less) see and experience things the same everywhere. You know, the whole global village thing. That’s true to an extent, yet we physically live in ‘a place’, a community, which defines itself (and us) through a daily conversation taking place by it’s inhabitants. A lot of that conversation is driven by the geography and it’s proximity to resources and other communities. The climate and weather, employment, culture, history, where it’s inhabitants came from, recreation, life style (the communities collective attitude) all play their part. They shape the conversation we are attracted to, or ignore.
It’s true, social media redefined local. Any group of people that band together (online) around an idea no matter how many or where they are on the planet, is now local. I believe that also, yet that’s a virtual local (not quite physical). Much of what shapes our lives and our perception of the world, sustains our views, and impacts our attitudes, is generated within our particular geographic location, its people, events, and the conversation it has that we experience on a day to day basis.
Traveling around the Pacific Northwest I don’t find extreme differences from place to place, yet all the same each community, each geographic locale, has it’s own unique flavor and demographic. It’s the smaller, often more mundane things that create that local flavor and interest me.
For example, I grew up in Renton… The dictionary pronounces it [Ren-tn] (that’s kinda close), but that’s not how a real local pronounces it. Real locals say [Ren(t)-n]. The “t” finishes the tongue in readiness for the “n”. It stays on the roof of the mouth and doesn’t release to make the ‘tuh’ sound. It’s mostly silent, followed by a strong “n”…
When I hear it pronounced [Rent’n], [Ren-tun], or [Ren-town] I can safely assume pawdner,
“You’re not from around these parts, are you?”
Or like this morning (a fabulous example), I was in Puyallup (it baffles many) hosting a social media conversation. We pronounce it locally as [pyoo-al-uhp], but depending on where you come from, I’ve heard [Pew-ee-allup] (like the church pew), [Poo-allop] (we all know about poo), [Poo-ee-allup], and [Pie-ul-up]… I love this. It signifies to me the real (on the street) salt of the earth colloquial conversation.
I was caught one time on this very same thing in Oregon and the room totally cracked up when I made my feeble early attempt at pronouncing Scappoose.
Here in the Puget Sound area, especially over the past 20 years, we’ve experienced a great influx of people who have moved here from everywhere on the planet. The social fabric of our region has become a very rich and intricate mosaic of diverse cultures who are now part of the personality of our region.
Opportunity will be realized by those who are willing not only to adopt the emerging technologies of communication, but practice them. They will emerge as leaders if they understand, listen, and participate. They will be inclusive not exclusive. They will win the day because they fundamentally get as a core value their communities collective colloquial conversation. They are local and their view is global, and they share themselves within this evolving context.
That’s why being a spokes-person for localism is so vitally important and powerful.
The Blackberry Chronicles
© ARFCO MEDIA 2010
6 days ago
