Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much!
Today I was part of a great Twitter chat #SOBcon. Lots of smart folks and a question came up that I found intriguing because of the dialogue it stirred in everyone.
“Where do you find your inspiration to blog or write”
The stir came when it was suggested that inspiration and having an editorial schedule could be polar opposites. Many agreed with this notion, some did not and sliced it down the middle.
The issue came down to this conundrum:
“That’s only the tip of the iceberg,” is what we say when we want our hearers to know the challenge, problem, or opportunity is deeper, more expansive, more significant than what we see. In human interaction, what we SEE—skin color, clothes, grooming, posture, and facial expression—are only the tip of the iceberg of who a person actually is.
Just like most of an iceberg is hidden, so a human being’s backstory is out-of-sight. If you wanted to see the rest of the iceberg, you’d have to do a deep dive underneath the water (which would be very cold, I presume). You’d have to do some research, get special gear, probably make more than one trip to berg, and in general, make a serious investment.
If you want to see a human’s backstory, you’ll have to make a serious investment, too. However, you can get started right away by making a determined choice to pause before you make those snap judgements about what you see in others. Instead, run what you think about what you see through the backstory filter by reminding yourself, “There’s more to this story.” Then, temper your words and actions with compassion.
For companies, it means valuing the backstory by making a commitment to listen, explore, and discover your customers’ backstories—asking where were they before the discovered you, understanding what fears, hopes, dreams, and goals are, discovering what fuels their imaginations and actions.
When you take the time to value another’s backstory, you gain insight into why people do what they do. You’ll be better prepared to actually help them do what they want to do.
What’s your customer’s backstory? What’s yours?
Trey Pennington
In 2010, facing the biggest public relations crisis in recent history, oil company BP turned to the one medium that could instantly address public concern: social media. Nearly six months after the Gulf of Mexico oil spill occurred, BP has nearly 48,000 Facebook fans, over 19,000 Twitter followers and more than three million YouTube channel views.
Social media updates describe cleanup efforts, research projects targeting impacts of the oil spill and calls for volunteers.
While the success of BP’s social media efforts is debatable, few people can argue the need to monitor and address online comments and feedback. As BP has shown, the biggest change may be the new challenges in reputation management. With these challenges also come new opportunities – opportunities to mitigate bad press, connect with customers and reach potential influencers in the media.
New Threats, New Opportunities
Reputation management isn’t just necessary for big corporations. Small businesses also benefit from monitoring social media chatter, whether or not they have social media profiles. Simple searches on Facebook and Twitter reveal valuable information about customer satisfaction, competitor weaknesses and new market opportunities.
It might be about the size of the screen and whether or not you’re standing up.
Start at the bottom. For the first five years of the Internet, the most used function was email. Email remains a bedrock of every device and system that’s been built on top of the internet, though sometimes it looks like a text message or a mobile check in. This is the layer for asynchronous person to person connection, over time.
Moving from left to right, we see how the way we use the thing we call the internet has evolved over time. We also see how devices and technology and bandwidth have changed the uses of the net and, interestingly, how a growth in mass has led to a growth in self-motivated behavior.
Over the years, I’ve written extensively about the need to extend opportunities in social media beyond marketing and customer service to set the stage for the social business. I believe that the impact lies beyond the socialization of business; it introduces us to a genre of an adaptive business, an entity that can earn relevance now and over time by listening, engaging, and learning.
In October 2009, I worked with JESS3 to visualize corporate transparency and authenticity for the release of Engage. In the process, I realized that those two words, transparent and authentic, didn’t carry tangible business value to leaders and decision makers.
Please, before you think about engaging in social media, I need you to do two things…be transparent and authentic in all you do.
Got it? Good.