Tools don’t matter, and the best ones get out of the way, allowing people to connect more easily and effectively. That was my big takeaway from last Friday’s second-annual Blog Potomac.

Obsessing about “what’s next” in online services and technology saps too much valuable attention away from what’s really important: connecting with people. We need to stop obsessing on what comes after Twitter and focus instead on how best to connect to, communicate with and relate to our clients, colleagues and consumers.

Here’s why: The internet, with all of those fun time-sync tools, is supposed to make connecting with people more efficient. Social networks, blogs, microblogs and forums destroy the previously prohibitive barriers to efficient communications: moving people physically around the planet and making sure they’re in the same place at the same time. But the downside of all of this efficiency is that too many of us lose track of the forest for the trees.

Imagine obsessing the way we do about cool tools in the ballroom at the local Marriott, where many a meeting is held. The physically convenient, affordable hotel with rooms for visitors and plenty of elbow room and resources is not the focus, but encouraging connection, communication, brainstorming, relationship-making and business is.

Hotels, conference centers, message boards, instant messengers, social networks and blogs are just communication aids — the journey, not the destination. Even Second Life, World of Warcraft, Xbox Live, MMOGs and MMORPGs are more about real people spending their real lives with each other than about wanton sex or video games.

So, why has asynchronous global communications reduced living, breathing people into user IDs and handles? At Blog Potomac, folks like Shel Holtz, Liz Strauss and Scott Monty all mentioned how persistently important to their practices the humble, hundred-year-old telephone is when it comes to connecting, especially during a crisis. I moved back from Berlin primarily because folks wanted to get me into the room, take a look into my eyes and see how firmly I shake hands — all things I believed didn’t matter as long as I did the work. Not true!

I had started thinking about these sort of things at the Social Media Camp NY in 2008 when I heard a talk by Howard Greenstein and Dean Landsman on “What Old Media can teach New Media: Media Convergence & Integration, Social Media, and Professionalism.” Long story short, Greenstein and Landsman posit there is a direct evolutionary link between the Lascaux cave drawings and the blogger. I agree with them.

The conclusion is that what makes digital PR and social media marketing challenging and new is not the technology or the tools, it is the unique culture of online conversation. If you focus too much on the tools, you might forget that virtual communities are not virtual. If you don’t learn to love, respect and appreciate virtual online communities as real homes to real people, as real as the village square, the parish hall, the Paris Tabac or the alumni group, then you’re underestimating the passion, loyalty and deep personal relationship found there.

This lack of understanding and appreciation will almost always result in a tragic faux pas, the likes of which may result in brand suicide. You can easily avoid this if you understand the operative word in the phrase Virtual Online Community is “community.”

(Via AdAge DigitalNext)

Do you think that people who play Second Life, World of Warcraft, Xbox Live, MMOGs, and MMORPGs are freaks? Do you consider message boards, forums, virtual realities, and virtual communities to be a waste of time, populated by losers?

If so, then you need to leave online advocacy, new media marketing, online brand promotion, online word of mouth marketing, online outreach, blogger relations, and brand ambassadorship to someone who has lived, loved, and connected to people in real ways online. And continues to do so.

There is a general misunderstanding that online virtual communities are escapist. Many of our clients believe that Second Life (SL), World of Warcraft (WoW), and even Role Playing Games (RPGs) are places wherein geeks, freaks, losers, and loners go to escape their desperate, pathetic, lives. On the contrary!

So-called virtual communities are entirely real and populated with real people with real hopes and real passions. The connections, tribes, relationships, and families that people make online are long-term, real, and intense.

In much the same way that the smart kid may not find people who understand (or even like) him in high school, only to find people just like him — who really “get him” — upon arriving at College; the members of virtual online communities often look for and find like-minded people online.

Online, you can find a large population of like-minded birds-of-a-feather no matter how niche your interest, no matter how counter-culture your fetish.

The Internet can be a safe place for people to explore themselves. The Internet can allow access to people who are shy, easily intimidated, overwhelmed, or are just “trying out” different personalities, experiences, relationships, and roles before committing.

The Internet allows its denizens to “try before you buy.”

That said, they are real people. Their connections online are real. Their roles — even fantastic or bizarre — are true and impenetrable and must be respected.

People are going online to discover people who are exactly like them, called birds of a feather, rather than merely suffering those friends and family may no longer be a lifestyle choice but a life obligation. People are not escaping, they’re exploring, they’re mapping, and they’re defining. Most of them end up truly blooming in this online world.

Do not engage online if you are unable to respect the full import and depth of culture, experience, and relationship that already exists — and is forever becoming deeper and more formalized.

If you do not learn to love, respect, appreciate virtual online communities as real homes to real people, as real as the village square, the parish hall, the Paris Tabac, or the alumni group then you’re underestimating the passion, loyalty, and deep personal relationship found there.

This lack of understanding and appreciation will almost always result in a tragic faux pas the likes of which may result in brand suicide, the likes of which can be easily avoided if you had just understood that the operative word of Virtual Online Community is community. And community, in this case, is synonymous with family.

From Online Communities are Not Virtual by Chris Abraham