Even if a network pays attention, it can sometimes be difficult to get it to do anything. After all, most people over the age of 30 have been taught their entire lives to watch, listen or read media passively, whether it’s a television program, a newspaper article or a radio broadcast. Communication, as it is defined through those mediums is mostly about receiving something, not about doing anything with it. Conversation, engagement and collaboration have been limited to personal interaction, telephone calls or e-mail but with the rise of social media platforms, conversations are starting to go beyond those limits.  An article, a video or an image can and should be anything but passive. But if the natural inclination of a network is to listen or read but not engage, how can a conversation begin? How can a network take active interest in an agenda, participate, collaborate, and even take ownership in its success? How do you get the Beast involved?

In recent articles, I’ve discussed the challenge of defining your network (seeDefine the Beast) of feeding it a regular, nutritious and provocative diet of high value content, (see Satisfy the Beast, Junk Food or Health Food and Feed the Beast: The Social Media Marketer’s Challenge), and getting the Beast to pay attention, (see The Beast of Difference: Getting the Network to Pay Attention). The challenge of moving from attention to collaboration is difficult to solve…but it may be the most important. After all, if social media efforts don’t prompt some kind of action from a network, can they be considered successful? Were they worth doing at all?

In a former career, I spent some time writing plays for the stage. I was fortunate to work with an incredible editor and director, Mary Poole (currently a member of the Northwestern University faculty in Evanston, Illinois). I was struggling to write a scene where a young man was talking to his fiancé on the phone. He knew that he was about to die, but couldn’t tell her. She knew that she was bearing his child, but couldn’t tell him. If the scene worked, it could bring the audience quickly into the tragedy of the play – and drive to the climactic final scenes. If the scene didn’t work, there was little for an audience to care about.

At one point, I considered writing a moment when the young man would put the phone down and cry. It seemed like a logical thing for the character to do, and I thought it a good time to express the deep pain and loss that he felt. When I showed the scene to Mary, her response was as immediate as it was definite: “Don’t do it.”

When I asked her why, she gave an eloquent and resonate answer that I believe applies to almost every form of communication. “You have to let the audience cry.” According to Mary, the more the actors on stage experience an emotion, the less room there is for those watching to experience it themselves. Consider, for example, a comedian telling a joke. If someone laughs before or during the punch-line, it’s almost impossible for anyone else to find it funny. The same thing happens when an actor cries. By experiencing the emotion, they are taking away the suspense, the experience and ultimately the release that an audience member feels when they are guided to an emotional response. The audience might feel sorry for a crying actor, or a laughing comic, but they are unlikely to experience the sorrow or the joy.

In order to make the scene in the play work, we didn’t allow the actors to cry. Instead, we had them spend the entire scene describing how much they loved each other and how much they looked forward to being together again. Members of the audience knew what was happening, were able to make the connections, directly felt the longing and disappointment of the two characters, and in the end, most of the audience became actively engaged with the experience. Many of them cried.

The most compelling and powerful words are quite often those that are not spoken. Social media, like any collaborative communication, depends on its ability to call people to action, guide other’s thinking and prompt engagement. If you want a network to engage, it is important to allow it to make its own connections, follow its own logic patterns, contribute its own ideas and fill in the gaps. Something to disagree with, to expand on, to clarify, is an invitation for others to participate.

Long before there was an Internet or social networking sites, the best communication has actually always driven engagement, even participation from others. When considering the more successful examples of speeches, articles, books, or images, it is apparent that they succeed, not just because they are well executed, but also, and more importantly because they moved others to participate. How did they do that? There are many different tools that were used, but there are a couple of things I noticed that they have in common:

1. A differentiated, provocative, even ambitious vision. The communication has to see, reveal or imagine something that prompts others to look at their lives, their work and their world in a different way. It prompts a reframing of the problem and a set of solutions to shared challenges.
2. Room for improvement. Interactive communication is never complete. In example after example, it’s possible to find so much that is missing, so much that needs to be filled in and so much room for interpretation and debate.

Consider Daniel Burnham’s plan for the City of Chicago written in 1909. It was a vastly ambitious plan that re-imagined what a modern American city could be. Even though there was no way to foresee the massive changes in society, technology and economics to come, this plan has managed to guide Chicago development in ways big and small for over 100 years. Every planning issue wasn’t addressed, and every idea wasn’t universally embraced. Instead, the plan started a century-long dialogue. Its vision was large and exciting and its details were provocative and insightful. It was not, however, the final word on how all buildings and roads were to be completed. Instead, it was an initial road map, and a conversation starter. The plan, though authored by Mr. Burnham and his collaborator, Edward Bennett, is not owned by him. Instead it is owned by everyone who engages with the ongoing creation of Chicago.

The same could be said of one of the most powerful and inspiring speeches of the 20^thcentury: “I Have a Dream” by Martin Luther King, Jr. Although Reverend King did not give precise instructions on how to improve civil rights, his vision has become a starting point for almost every discussion of racial equality and a guidepost for every effort since he spoke to thousands of people from the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC. Interestingly, not everyone agrees about the precise implications of his speech. For example, his words,

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character,”

have been used as guidance for both those who support and oppose affirmative action policies. His vision is crystal clear, but the details are to be worked out by the network of people who listen to his words.

A final example is much older, but it shares quite a bit in common with the other two. TheConstitution of the United Stateswas written in 1789, but still guides discussion and debate over 200 years later. The document outlines a broad vision for the governance of a country, with provocative ideas and powerful concepts. It does not cover every eventuality in detail, it often seems vague, and it could not possibly anticipate all the particular issues of a 21^st century country of 50 states and 308 million people. I imagine that Mr. Jefferson and his fellow authors never intended to try. Instead, they designed it to start a conversation, to invite others to disagree, to fill in the blanks, to interpret and to continually improve upon their ideas.

Common in all of these examples is their provocative, differentiated, and ambitious vision – but also common is the amount of detail they leave out. They allow the listener, or the reader to experience the idea or vision as well as the tension between it and the current reality. They don’t cry for us, instead they let us feel, think and participate. They don’t end debate, they start the conversation. They let the Beast cry.

And if we want to engage the Beast of social media, so should all of us.