Online social media are all the rage these days – everybody wants to know how to use this new technology to improve business results. I’ve been engaged in this myself for many years so it’s a bit surprising that it’s taken so long, but there’s good reasons for it.
The fact is that when new ideas or technologies arrive on the scene, they’re always something that only those on the bleeding edge can really love. There’s no rules, it’s all confusing, the technology doesn’t work right, and nobody knows if it’s leading to useful results. So only the wild-eyed evangelists can love it.
But the online social media are reaching a new level of maturity, and we’re learning how to get the most from them.
Here’s the key thing to keep in mind: These tools are about connecting people to people, about developing relationships.
That’s easy to forget, because the technology lets you do fun things and you can establish a presence which is much more about the tools than the people. I can use Twitter to instantly send out messages to millions of people. How fun is that?
Well, imagine that I was standing in the middle of a busy square, handing out a little piece of paper to everyone. On that paper (maximum 140 characters!) is something pretty unremarkable, perhaps “Boy, that movie I went to last night was pretty interesting!”
Can you imagine that this would help me to build a relationship with those people? How about if I held up a sign that conveyed the same message? Or if I stood on a box and shouted that to everyone who came by? I would imagine that people would quickly try to escape earshot.
So, like any other relationship-building, these tools need to communicate with people in human ways:
- People will engage if they enjoy the experience
- They want to get some kind of value from engaging with you
- They also want to know that they’re being listened to and appreciated
If the tools help you to connect with customers at this kind of human level, then you’ll see results. That’s how you want to think about this.
And I’d like to see the business which doesn’t need to have relationships with its customers in order to succeed.
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