Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much!
There is no doubt anymore that the social media revolution has made permanent changes to the communication landscape-both for companies and individuals. However the individual changes are what’s driving the social media industry in business, and many companies are still slow picking up on this.
You’ve heard me talk about employee advocacy before, and how important it is to Empower your Employees (who will then Power your Brand) and to encourage them to “be social” in today’s relationship age. The fact that relationships are the new currency is true whether you are looking for a job, planning an event or selling a product/service. That being said, I’m always on the lookout for companies that “get” this concept, and especially for a company that can help other companies to start doing the same. To this end I recently joined Dynamic Signal’s Advisory Board and am working with them to make their product the best it can be.
There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that social conversation has changed the way business gets done. People have argued with me about this, but the simple fact of the matter is, the change hasn’t been brought about by the social “industry” so much as by the way people use technology and social platforms. It’s all about people relating to each other as individuals.
In fact, the only way I think of social media as media anymore is in the advertising component. But advertising is advertising. It’s still a one-way message blasted to a broad audience, and always has been. The social change that I’m talking about, where relationships are built and nurtured, is all about conversation. It’s about where communication, collaborative consumption, and overall insight is being built into every facet of business.
Big Data. Big Brother. The NSA debacle. People in the United States are feeling vulnerable. And with all the publicity surrounding online security hacks and stolen account numbers (not to mention all-out identity theft), is it any wonder that consumers are leery of giving brands their personal information?
For me it is not about tools, but about strategy, and execution. Here are a few things to consider in addition to just posting articles and working the SEO angle…
When people ask me what’s the ROI of Social, I ask them… what’s the ROI of Trust, and what’s the ROI of Loyalty. The answer, when used to build relationships the results will be… longer lifetime value of a customer, larger average order value, and increased frequency of purchase. All measurable and all lead to increased sales and profits.
Humans have become adept at automating everything, and we’re rapidly replacing human effort with mechanization and/or computerization. We have found a way to automate more and more tasks in our factories, schools, medicine, even communication! While this is often a good thing, we’re also coming to terms with the fact that we can’t (and shouldn’t) automate every aspect of our lives. Some of us have found out the hard way that just because you can automate a process, that doesn’t necessarily mean you should. And that’s especially true of human interaction. I’m feeling particularly thankful that business seems to be finally taking a closer look at the value of building relationships and their critical importance.
The beauty of events and traveling is the ability to take relationships developed digitally to a face-to-face encounter that cements the connection. Most think this does not scale, but it does because when you make this a regular part of your travels, always reaching out and creating “moments,” others participate vicariously and feel a part of those meetings when you share them socially.
An interviewer posed this question to me recently: Is networking in social media a worthy investment?