So now that you are properly focused on social media and are retreading your business’ tires to operate in the powder-fresh snows of social media, what other work do you have before you? I mean isn’t that enough? You’ve been reading all the best marketing blogs, set-up listening stations to monitor your corner of the world and you’ve even taken steps to do some website redesign to incorporate your social networking profiles. And your developing content for the blog and locating the people within your organization who can handle these new responsibilities. You may feel like you’ve done enough.
I am going to be the messenger of ill tidings then when I tell you all those good intentions and hard work are not enough. Shoot me if you must. But I speaketh the truth, because for all the good that adopting social media into your business or brand operations will get you, the more important wook is in the philosophy behind this switch.
Is Social Media the Tools or the Philosophy?
Social media is more than just a shiny new toolkit. Social media represents a whole new way of thinking about business, about communication, about sales and marketing, about customer service, about technology about human resources. The tools of social media surely touches all of these silos. But what binds them together is the underlying philosophy that vivifies, that gives life, to social media.
- What good is Twitter to you if you haven’t learned how to have authentic, real-time and highly personal conversations with your customers?
- What benefit does Foursquare have for your business if you’ve simply slapped on some mundane mayor offering, but don’t really care about location-based marketing?
- What’s the point of loading Google Analytics into your websites if you aren’t sitting down with them once a week and listening to what your traffic is telling you?
The point is that adopting the tools of social media doesn’t make your business ready to succeed in a world of social media. You are going to have to dig deeper and make the particular connections between the philosophy behind things to the tools that make them work. For instance:
What is your policy on public complaints or queries about your new service or product? Who is going to handle those mentions? When and where will you compromise and admit when you are wrong? Similarly, at what point along this continuum will you hold the line? How committed are you to your blog features when the metrics are telling you they aren’t hitting your goals?
The Philosophy Behind Social Media
The philosophical underpinnings of social media do not have anything to do with the tools or networks that animate social media. The posture and stance that animates this ethic is perhaps the biggest shift that brands and businesses are going to have to make. Which is why social media has been so quickly and more productively employed by individuals. Individuals have the flexibility to change on a dime. We can rebrand in an hour. Trust me. I’e done so about 25 times in the past 6 months. I can be anything I want to be.
Businesses though? Not so much. You can’t change the direction of a big fat oil tanker around in five minutes. It takes an hour. Or the better part of a day. How are you supposed to shift the entire philosophy of your business around while at the same time negotiating a recessionary environment, the fact that you are trying to do more with less (employees, budgets, time). Not exactly the time to be making deep changes to the philosophy behind your business. You need a tugboat. You need someone to help you negotiate the twists and turns of the Port of Call you want to arrive safely in.
Which is why it is crucial that businesses focus less on adopting the tools of social media and spend more of their time talking about the 21st Century. What does new mean to your business? What does breaking with the past mean? What does sustainability conjour? How are we going to communicate better (and no this doesn’t mean more emailing)? How are we going to move past the jealousies, the politics, the bureacratic obfuscations that prevent your business from actually changing? How are you going to retrofit your business?
It’s only going to come from the top. This can only be done through the illustration of true leadership. Motivating your employees not just to buy into what you are selling them but in believing in even more than you may, and providing them the freedom to be nimble and to go off and motivate others on their own. This is how the 21st Century requires you to adapt.
How are you going to talk about competition without sounding afraid? I know of some businesses, even new media enterprises, where even mentioning the name of their chief rival in the office can get you nasty stares? How preposterous!
It’s stunning to see how many businesses are talking the talk with social media, saying all the right things, making gestures in all the right directions, and ABSOLUTELY FAILING at learning the lessons behind what makes social media work.
What makes social media work is the lubricating influence of an entire new set of eyes. How’s your vision these days?
Image Courtesy of Dan Kamminga on Flickr
