Digital Cats and Control

I love cats. Most of my adult life I've been owned by at least one feline. Rocky, who currently lets me live in his house, was named for Rocky Top (a tune we hear many times on Saturdays in the fall), not Rocky Balboa. Nevertheless, he is far more likely to punch at bags than be contained in them.

Rocky

Still, I was struck by a recent article that asserted: "letting go of a false sense of control is important. The digital cat is out of the bag and everyone has social media."

The same day I smiled over the concept of #digitalcats, I also read an insightful piece about brands and reputation. A recent meeting of chief marketing officers in higher education seems to have come to a broad agreement that communicators manage brands while reputation "happens to you."

My academic research career began with an attempt to understand interactivity. I still don't really know what it is, but an article I published with a graduate student in the pre-social-media era of 2002 identified user #control as a key element of interactivity.

Have professional communicators lost #control of our messages? Did we ever have it? Can we manage brands? Or will unruly #digitalcats frisk round cyber space clawing at our reputations?