January 31, 2010

Forget Common Sense: Social Media Communicators Must Have Empathy

Life on the social web has taught me just how important it is to have a flexible mind — to have empathy for others with little or no context. This requires the ability to imagine a set of unknown circumstances to help explain others’ point of view with little information. Some may come by this trait naturally, but others might need to develop it over time.

Understanding Empathy in Terms of Culture

“Who we are cannot be separated from where we are from — and when we ignore that fact, planes crash.” – Malcolm Gladwell in Outliers

Keep reading →

9 Comments

Filed under communications, social media

Tags: , , , ,

January 31, 2010

New Guidelines From FINRA: Has Social Media Gone Mainstream?

Something interesting happened last week: FINRA, the Finance Industry Regulatory Authority, released new guidelines specific to social media sites for registered professionals and companies.

FINRA’s choice to differentiate between static and interactive content for social networking sites is something unique I’ve not seen in other types of regulatory guidelines related to social media.

I am not a lawyer, so for specific details or direct interpretation, please consult one.

Interactive “Postings” No Longer “Advertisements”

Under FINRA’s new rules, static content is to be treated as an advertisement subject to verbatim approval from a compliance official as well as a principal of the firm. Static content on social networks would be profile information, images, background graphics and other content that to remain somewhat permanent.

On the other hand, interactive content is classified as communication under FINRA’s new guidelines and does not require principal approval but does need to be supervised in a manner similar to email communication. FINRA’s member firms should already be accustomed to similar archiving and supervising procedures — these same guidelines now extend to activity in social networks.

Why This Signifies Progress

In the past, all online postings, including those now classified as communication, were instead regarded as advertisements and were subject to principal approval. Having a principal of the firm approve every single status update or posting to a social network like Twitter would seem downright prohibitive [read: not worth the trouble] to what many consider is the best way to participate: frequent, conversational posts.

Many see the new rules as a sign that social networks have entered the mainstream. What do you think?

Supervision and archiving are still a key part of the process for FINRA companies, but firms are not held accountable for “third-party posts” [read: user generated content] on company blogs and social profiles.

The FINRA social media task force does, however, recommend the adoption of best practices that include:

  • establishing appropriate usage guidelines for customers and other third parties that are permitted to post on firm-sponsored Web sites;
  • establishing processes for screening third-party content based on the expected usage and frequency of third-party posts
  • disclosing firm policies regarding its responsibility for third-party posts

Download the full PDF of FINRA’s new guidelines for social media sites.

The best practices here definitely seem reasonable for company-owned media like blogs and online communities.

What do you think of FINRA’s new rules? A step in the right direction? Dangerous for member companies or consumers?

Or, are policies that encourage supervision and archiving enough to keep companies from engaging in social media in a real and genuine way?

I’m interested to know how others feel about this kind of oversight.

Bookmark and Share

Image of Everett Rogers’ Diffusion of Innovations theory courtesy of Wesley Fryer


8 Comments

Filed under communications, marketing, pr, social media

Tags: , , ,

January 25, 2010

Want More Attention for your Social Media Marketing? Send a Chef

Sideview of chef cooking in a kitchen

Last week I wrote about the importance of showing up for companies looking to market with social media. In this post I talked about a type of catch 22 many companies face as they enter this space:

“…social media and tech audiences aren’t interested in hearing sanitized positioning statements from an official spokesperson, and most companies have policies that prevent anyone BUT the official spokesperson from speaking on behalf of the company.”

Smart guy and PR pro Arik Hanson read that post and asked in the comments what I thought about the official spokesperson model for providing the public with information. He noted there are many strategic as well as legal reasons companies need to have a select few provide “official” statements on behalf of the company.

In my answer I explained that I think of the issue in terms of a restaurant owner/manager versus that of a chef.

If we can compare your business to the business of running a restaurant, I think we quickly understand there will be times when it makes sense for the owner or business manager to speak on behalf of the restaurant as a business and times when it would make more sense to enlist the chef.

For instance if someone in the public or the media wants insight into the local economy, the restaurant’s policies or other business procedure it makes sense to speak to the owner or business manager. If, however, the questions have to do with food preparation, meal planning and ingredient selection, the chef is the natural spokesperson — especially if there is any type of demonstration involved.

Real Transparency Means Sending Chefs

There is a big need for more companies engaged in social media to show up to social media and tech-related events. Innovation requires collaboration and the good will experienced by companies who send along the real people who do the work of social media win big. Think Dell, Zappo’s, Comcast, etc.

The reason we need chefs is so they can share how they’re able to accomplish what they’re able to accomplish. It also helps when they share their struggles. Sometimes the company chefs even learn from others at the conferences they attend in addition to extending the company’s reach. We chefs also speak a different language — we know when you’re not really one of us.

This may be news to some, but when it comes to speaking to traditional media outlets about social media, they’re also much more interested in speaking with the social media chefs rather than the traditional spokesperson for much the same reason. Next time you read a big feature on an industry’s usage of social media, most of the big quotes in the lead of the article will be from the people actually engaged in these channels – NOT the usual spokesperson.

The companies who answer the call of the journalist looking to do some in-depth reporting on social media with ONLY the usual spokesperson are lucky to see a soundbite appear on page three of the article. If you want to drive the story and make the cover, send a chef.

New Channels New Approaches

Social media isn’t just online – offline events are just as important in this space. Most marketers understand the importance of programming according to the channel. No one would think of simply putting an audio version of a television commercial on radio, nor would they think an online banner ad could be repositioned as-is in print, the medium and the audience are always considered. The same thing is true here.

The expectation of this new channel is that the chefs show up, not necessarily the owner/managers.

Or, if we do away with the restaurant analogy, we expect those directly involved in social media show up rather than official spokespeople. Although, the official spokespeople are welcome to tag along, they just won’t be the only one speaking :-) Think of social media events as an offline extension of the online social media channels — not something altogether separate.

Help Them “Get It”

I like sharing analogies like this because I think they help explain why we need to alter the traditional approaches to conversation. Don’t discount the power of story in your business case.

I think there are plenty of times it still makes sense to engage an official spokesperson – especially when there are legal requirements in play, but when it comes to explaining new requirements for new channels, most anyone can understand this.

Social media types also need to understand that there are simply certain lines of questioning and conversation that may remain off limits for public discussion. Maybe a good solution is defining a scope of conversation for offline events to ensure others in your organization that you’re not going to stray into areas that may get you or someone else in trouble. Does this make sense?

I also don’t think you necessarily need to attend every single event or conference, but if there are strategic benefits, make sure you’re sending the right person to engage the audience online as well as offline.

What do you think of the official spokesperson model in social media channels? Is it important that we talk shop in order to get others to invest in our mission or should the traditional approaches do the trick?

Photo Credit: jenny downing (r&r)



Bookmark and Share

7 Comments

Filed under marketing, pr, social media

Tags: , , , ,

January 23, 2010

Social Media Gets Operational

Click the Image to Download

Click Image to Download

Late last year I contributed a bit to a free ebook called Marketing in 2010. This project is the brain child of the brilliant Valeria Maltoni, aka Conversation Agent.

The contributions in here are rich with insight and practical details on how to integrate the social media ethos into established marketing and business processes.

It was an honor to be asked to contribute and I hope you get as much out of it as I have.

Co-conspirators in this project include: Jason Baer, Olivier Blanchard, Danny Brown, Mark Earls, Rachel Happe, Gavin Heaton, Jackie Huba, Jonathan MacDonald, and Amber Naslund.

Download the Marketing in 2010 eBook here

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Leave a Comment

Filed under marketing

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

January 20, 2010

The Importance of Showing Up

Richard Binhammer from Dell and Mack Collier at SXSWi 2009 Photo Credit: David Alston

Woody Allen said 80 percent of success is showing up, but when it comes to establishing a meaningful presence on the social web, that figure may be closer to 100 percent.

There’s an opportunity here.

As much as I respect and admire the work of companies like Zappo’s, Comcast, Dell and Ford with respect to their use of social media in connecting with customers and all other types of people online and offline. I’ve often heard people grumble that they’re actually sick of always hearing from and about this list of usual suspects, not because they don’t learn from their experience and expertise — a quick Google search will show a whole lot of conversation around each of these brands, but because people are hungry for more.

I also don’t believe that anyone really wishes these companies weren’t present in the space, but what they’re really saying is they want a wider variety of voices, experiences and stories to draw from.

Official Is Not Always Social

Unfortunately, rather than opening up and sharing, I’ve heard a few people who organize conferences and events bemoan the lack of companies willing to let their social media teams speak about their work.

The disconnect here is that the social media and tech audiences aren’t interested in hearing sanitized positioning statements from an official spokesperson, and most companies have policies that prevent anyone BUT the official spokesperson from speaking on behalf of the company.

Even journalists in mainstream publications will often bury quotes in features on social media from the official spokesperson and instead lead with quotes from companies who allow those with their boots on the ground in the social media space to drive the story. Often times, the ones driving these stories are on the list of our beloved usual suspects.

Zappo’s, Comcast, Dell and Ford show up in a big way — they show up online every day and they show up at our events. They talk strategy, tactics and measurement. They mingle and answer questions. They commiserate with others working in the space. They’re our friends!

The real lesson these brands offer is that their social media teams show up and they teach us, they don’t just market to us. But, in the teaching and sharing, we become much more receptive and supportive of their marketing messages.

It’s not rocket science, but the ethos of the social web goes much deeper than the 140 characters in a single Tweet.

These brands win because we can count on them to show up and share: isn’t that exactly what it means to be social?

I understand the need to have official spokespeople in an organization – or only a few who can speak on behalf of the strategy and direction of the business. But can new boundaries be drawn a little differently?

The amount of spend continues to increase for social media budgets in 2010, but I can’t help but wonder how deeply some strategies will be able to penetrate a community that values sharing if companies aren’t willing to show up and invest a little skin in the game.

2010 presents a whole host of new opportunities. How are you planning to show up?

Note: I have a lot of admiration for the companies named here. This post is not intended to be a criticism, but my hope is to show that the positive examples they offer go beyond the landing pages, web-based media and Twitter updates.  Several other companies are also doing a great job of showing up that aren’t named here and I did not mean to slight anyone.

Photo Credit: David Alston
Bookmark and Share

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

16 Comments

Filed under social media

Tags: , , , , ,

January 16, 2010

Knowledge Flows and the New Way to Network

When I was a little girl I remember sitting in a car stuck in stop-and-go traffic with my mom, and like most kids around the age of 4 or 5, I was growing impatient so I started asking questions:

Me: Why do we keep stopping?

Mom: Because the cars in front of us are stopped.

Me: Why?

Mom: Because the cars in front of them are stopped.

Me: Well, who’s in front?

Mom: What do you mean, ‘who’s in front?’

Me: Who’s at the front of the line of cars?

Somehow she was able to explain that no one was in front because there was no front – this wasn’t a line, but rather a network of roads populated with cars all destined for different places.

This blew my mind. I realize I was pretty young, but this rather mundane exchange between mother and daughter completely changed the way I viewed the world.

Of course I couldn’t really articulate this at the time, but after that I understood that cars on the road weren’t simply playing follow the leader, or racing to a finish line, but they were only happening to move in the same direction as us for a short time. Life for me became much less linear. Now it was about navigating my way through a crowded, complex system.

I share this story because I think many of us are experiencing a similar type of expansion in world view right now, especially as it relates to business and business interactions, due to the impact of the social web.

Like navigating your way through crowded city streets, networking is no longer about jockeying for position with push-type messaging in a race to a finish line, but about navigating a complex network full of questions and answers no single person, company or institution can possibly possess.

It’s Not Just About Who You Know

Not only is the pathway to success in business at an individual level different than it was just a few years ago, this is true at the macro level as well.

Ensuring success doesn’t rest solely on an eye for the bottom line. Cheaper isn’t always better in the long run when we sacrifice relationships in the process.

In the new economy trust and attention are just as important as profit. Collaboration, not domination leads to innovation and success.

The way to “network” is changing, not because of a new set of 10-commandment-style rules, but because whether we realize it or not, the impact of social technology has changed the definitions and necessary ingredients for success.

The emphasis is moving away from solo performers and contact acquisition to collaboration and contextual knowledge as it relates to other individuals.

A recent article by John Hagel III and John Seely Brown in the Harvard Business Review explains how the nuances of social networking have changed:

In this world, it is not who you know, but what you learn from, and with, who you know. Contacts are of very limited value in this changing world — the name of the game is how to participate in knowledge flows.

The old way was a linear path of collecting contacts  – the more the better. Marketing was simply a numbers game. The new path is simply about building real relationships based on collaboration and shared knowledge.

Old Word New Meaning

I think a lot of the disconnect between humans in online social networks has to do with the context wrapped around the word network used as a verb.

According to Hagel and JSB, networking is no longer about schmoozing. It’s about showing up ready to learn, acquiring contextual knowledge of others and building trust along the way:

In the classical networking approach, the game is about presenting yourself in the most favorable light possible while flattering the other person into giving you their contact information. This approach quickly degenerates into a manipulative exchange where the real identities of both parties rapidly recede into the background, replaced by carefully staged presentations of an artificial self. These staged interactions rarely build trust. In fact, they usually have the opposite effect, putting both parties on guard and reinforcing wariness and very selective disclosure.

How Do I Teach Someone To Be Human?

The above may seem like a rather ridiculous question, but I’ve heard this uttered several times from many different people I know who advise others on how to engage social networks. By the way, the question holds true for offline networking as well.

The answer to this question in my mind rests on the person’s capacity to share vulnerability.

Ironically, I learned about the importance of vulnerability in connecting with others as a student in an acting class I took several years ago.

The instructor convinced us that audiences do not connect with characters they can’t empathize with. We may justify our attraction to others based on their strengths, but we feel connected to others out of shared vulnerability.

How do we understand shared vulnerability as it relates to social networking?

Again, Hagel and JSB explain this rather well:

[The new way to network] often requires discussing publicly the issues you are wrestling with so others can become aware of them and seek you out if they are confronting similar issues. This can be very uncomfortable for most of us, because we are reluctant to expose provisional ideas and acknowledge that we are struggling with developing those ideas.

While we may think of our vulnerabilities as a sign of weakness, discussing what we find to be challenging is actually a sign of strength and requires a healthy dose of emotional maturity.

You as a Startup

Since the linear pathways no longer hold — especially on the web, maybe we can all approach our personal professional growth with the spirit of a startup.

Galen Ward left a comment on my last post describing the process of starting a new venture, “… test out some theories quickly and inexpensively, collect feedback, learn, and test out new theories.”

Doesn’t this sound a lot more fun than pretending to be perfect and having all the answers?

By the way in a great service to the startup community, SEOmoz recently published a very detailed blog post explaining their path along the venture capital funding process.

Speak Human

While openness and collaboration are good precursors to earning trust and building relationships, I still struggle with the fact that I cannot guarantee others will always be benevolent and worthy of trust. Nor can I help others decide where appropriate boundaries should be, and boundaries are still important.

I also think there’s a potential for us to develop a sense of false intimacy with our connections.

Do we need thicker skin and fail-safes to protect us from sharing too much, or like a startup, do we accept a certain amount of calculated risk?

I don’t have all the answers so I really hope you’ll share your thoughts in the comments.

Photo Credit: Ken OHYAMA

Bookmark and Share

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

23 Comments

Filed under communications, social media

Tags: , ,

January 14, 2010

Having a Personal Brand is Fine, But Making an Impact is Better

If you read a lot of the guidance around establishing an online presence, much of it revolves around this notion of building a personal brand. I’ve never embraced this principle because I feel it trivializes the human experience. Plus, I think the whole philosophy creates a lot of potential to confuse priorities with regard to relationships.

The best metaphor I can think of is that a personal brand should be the icing, not the cake.

Humans, Not Brands

  • Brands don’t love or experience love (though some might love a brand)
  • Brands don’t grieve or experience pain
  • Brands aren’t creative, ambitious or innovative (though many are the result of human creativity, ambition and innovation)
  • Brands don’t feel the human need for connection

Applying the rules of branding to help individuals play to their strengths and adapt an outer reflection of who they already are is a worthy exercise, but it’s not more important than developing real skill, experience and depth of character. A personal brand can’t substitute.

If what we want is fans, we have to be a fan first — not just look like one.

I know there are those who are very passionate about the importance of personal brands, but I believe that branding-applied-to-humans not only cheapens the outward expression of the human experience, it gives an inordinate amount of focus to the superficial stuff and less to the substance of what we have to offer and our impact on the world.

Having a consistent image that is aligned with our work is important, but substituting a glossy image for a lack of experience, or compensating for a narcissistic worldview won’t work well for long — online or offline.

How and Where to Make a Real Impact

Believe it or not, I was already coincidentally thinking a lot lately about how best to make an impact in my life and work before reading Jonathan Fields’ article about the question of impact earlier today. Keep reading →

36 Comments

Filed under social media

Tags: , , , ,

January 12, 2010

The Ugly Side of Social Media Part 2: Crap

While many social media consultants like to sing Kum Bay Ya over the ways the web Democratizes everything from content to business processes, there’s a side effect that’s difficult to ignore when everyone shows up: crap content and crap sites. Some might even argue that so much crowdsourcing paves a straight path to mediocrity, but that’s another post altogether.

There are a few different types of crap every social media professional will encounter in the day-to-day activities of his or her job (and I’m not talking about the stuff accumulating in your inbox).

Last week I wrote about how social media engagement can lead to a false sense of entitlement. That post was part one of a new series I’ve decided to write on the ugly side of social media.

Why is crap important?

Well, even if it’s a little unpleasant, it’s important to sift through this stuff in order to quantify why it’s crap to the higher-ups and to get your analytics insights in good shape. Taking credit for a massive amount of “mentions” that aren’t the result of real outreach might get you in trouble later since this sort of thing is way outside of your control.

Long story short: A mention isn’t always an actual mention even when your social media monitoring software or Google alert picks it up.

MFA aka Made for AdSense

Stoney deGeyter provides a lot of insight into the impact of MFAs on search over on the Search Engine Guide, but for my purpose here, I will tell you that the more valuable your paid keywords are for your industry, the more you will run into these sites. They often look like blogs or news-related sites from 100 yards away, but the content is either extremely bland OR it’s great and there are absolutely no subscribers, no About page, no comments, etc. If it’s more on the generic side, posts will typically be short (sometimes just a headline) and do little to inform or explain anything.  Please note: a lot of these sites also scrape content (see below).

Ugly Side Effect: Looks like a mention, but really isn’t. Sites like this will often tag your company name along with several of your competitors in attempt to generate ads. Really scary to consider: your company might actually be paying to advertise through AdSense on sites like this without even realizing.

Blatant Scrapers

Sites like this will often intentionally post (read: plagiarize) duplicate content from your blog or website. Deep linking to other content on your site can sometimes make this work to your advantage, but often sites like this will strip out any links you’ve already embedded in your content.

Ugly Side Effect: Offers an exact duplicate of your stuff! Plus, when sites strip out links you’ve embedded in your content, not only does this show up as a sort of fake online mention, it makes useless any attempts to increase your own search engine optimization and encourage engagement with other content on your own site. To make matters worse, some will even embed their own (often spammy) links into your precious content whenever generic, non-branded keywords are used. Plus, to the unsavvy web-searcher, sites like this might actually look like they’re somehow affiliated with your brand.

However, a lot of scrapers rely on bots that pull in content via your RSS feed and actually leave your embedded links intact. This RSS footer WordPress plugin will at least let readers of the content know where it originated – it will let you insert custom link/anchor text into the bottom of each post on your RSS feed.

Unwitting Scrapers

A lot of scraping is done rather unwittingly. Newbies to the social space will think they’re reblogging a piece of content in a respectful manner, but they don’t provide quality anchor text. I search for a lot of information on social media information and encounter a lot of reblogged posts on sites like Posterous that rank in Google’s search index when the original post is nowhere in sight.

Users of Posterous, Tumblr, etc. I respect the type of content curation you’re providing to your friends, but please go through the trouble of NOT posting the entire article — instead offer some encouragement to read more on the originating site. Another alternative can be to embed the link to the individual post into the headline text. This will at least tell Google and other search engines that the original piece of content is the original. Please note I don’t really use sites like this to curate online content so I’m not sure what the actual steps are to avoid scraping content to your profile.

Ugly Side Effect:Domains on sites like Posterous or reblogged blogs can sometimes rank higher in search indexes than the originating post. I think this may be a flaw in how sites like this are indexed, but still… if you’re going to curate information and collect content, please at least provide good link attribution.

Understanding the Difference

Others in your organization may or may not understand the difference between scraped content (bad) and shared content (good). The nuances between REAL social mentions and FAKE social mentions are up to you to decipher based on your goals and strategy. There are a lot of benefits to be derived from real word of mouth, linking and content sharing, but those benefits can’t really be counted, or weighted in the same way, when the content has been scraped and repurposed — especially if it strips out valuable links.

The Internet never ceases to surprise me; if it qualifies as weird, chances are someone’s trying it out online.

Since 2010 is the year social media gets operational, let’s commiserate. Let me know what kind of crap you encounter in your day to day. How can we do our best to get to the actual value of social media engagement and get real about the ugly side effects? Are we ready to admit that some types of mentions shouldn’t count at all?

If you think I’ve got this all wrong, let me know. Should all mentions count in measurements of social media success? Is spam and junk content just a natural side effect of successful online buzz?
Bookmark and Share

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Photo Credit: jaxxon

3 Comments

Filed under social media

Tags: , , , , ,

January 10, 2010

Media as an Ecosystem

Image by Dave Fleet

Last week Dave Fleet got me thinking A LOT about how paid, earned and owned media can each be modeled as types of ecosystems. If you missed it, please go read his post and come back here to discuss — you’ll need to see what he’s working at here to get where I’m going with this.

From there, I couldn’t help but think that as helpful as it is to have each of these mapped out from an operational standpoint, this is not how consumers generally experience marketing media.

Rather than classifying each channel based on direction (push vs. dialog), consumers sort of collect (and forget) a dynamic set of impressions and conversations gathered in a mix of a lot of other impressions and conversations.

Some of those other impressions and conversations are relevant to what your company represents, but most are not.

Making an Impact

Most marketing is still not being created or executed with media ecosystems in mind beyond our own segment of paid, earned or owned media. To me this spells opportunity.

Those of us working on the social media side of marketing understand social networks and blogs as a sort of information ecosystem where content is shared and made relevant through linking and sharing. Similarly, those on the paid media side of the equation realize the importance of delivering the same messaging in different channels — broadcast, print, display (online and offline).

But, Dave is right to point out that maybe it’s time to think of success beyond our own discipline and integrate to make all of our marketing more successful.

Most of the people creating the paid vs. owned vs. earned media are not working together to aid the success of the other, but what if they did?

Let’s face it; most of the companies engaging in social media have simply added on another information silo with another set of rules, responsibilities and success metrics.

What If…

  • Pictures of display ads were shared on Flickr?
  • Online banner ads asked for consumers to follow the company on a social network?
  • Stores and product tags gave us instructions for finding out about promotions and discounts on Facebook?
  • Product manuals told us how we might ask for help on Twitter?
  • Affiliate marketers could opt-in to be included on media distribution lists for press releases and other company announcements?

I like to think the benefits of sharing and collaboration can be driven deeper inside companies and extend far beyond where things are now.

Looking Inward

Listening to what others are saying in social networks is still a great place to start, but maybe the second step should be getting a firm grasp on the traditional PR and marketing messaging and thinking about how to align earned brand experiences happening in outposts (social networks) with paid and owned types of marketing.

Like Playing Jazz

The goal of social media engagement shouldn’t be to participate in conversations for their own sake. That engagement should actually help the entirety of the marketing media achieve its goals — not by creating another disconnected set of impressions, but rather, giving those impressions personal relevance.

I’m not saying people should carry messaging into social networks, but they should at least know what their message is. Being off-topic, or human, is important, but so is knowing when it’s time to be ON topic and having guidelines that help identify business opportunities.

Even jazz musicians need to know the basic chord structure and melody of songs they make great through improvisation. Without guidelines and goals, we’re just chatting.

Back to Ecosystems

Most consumers aren’t thinking about your message is paid, earned or owned. Not that I’m trying to give Dave more work to do, but I can’t help but wonder what a comprehensive model might look like that encompasses paid, earned and owned media in a single, dynamic ecosystem that indicates movement through networks and channels in ways we have only yet to imagine.

Image by Dave Fleet
Bookmark and Share

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

7 Comments

Filed under marketing, social media

Tags: , , , ,

January 5, 2010

The Ugly Side of Social Media: Entitlement

Little girl having a tantrum in a ballerina outfitEntitlement isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but an overinflated sense of personal entitlement certainly can be.

As our expectations grow around business communication to include personalization, hyper-targeted messaging and responsiveness to our most trivial concerns in social networks could we be growing into a bunch of self-entitled brats?

As much as I appreciate the shift toward treating people like humans in our communication, how human is it to disregard and dismiss anything that isn’t packaged the way we prefer? Today I’m talking primarily about email, but I think this issue extends into communication in social networks as well.

While this may be your prerogative, I prefer human communication to mean that we are free to evaluate information, individuals and even technology on a case by case basis. To me, this is what it means to be a part of social business communication, not simply applying a new dogma with a new set of rules that must be adhered to as rigidly as the old ones.

Personal Entitlement Impacts Scalability

One thing I’ve learned is that when you transcend expectations at the very start of any relationship, the second you take a short-cut because your resources are stretched, the parameters have changed or you’re just plain having a difficult day, people do not react well.

People never seem to think that since you went above and beyond before that they should be grateful. For some reason, memories of past special treatment only ever seems to raise future expectations.

The elevated level of individual expectations means more and more people will be disappointed by your ability to scale any outreach.

Does mass communication still have a place?

Look, I understand that the best practice is to make sure you know who you’re talking to before sending any kind of outreach or PR pitch, but is it really that hard to hit delete? Do people need to be outed, blogged about and publicly dissed because you received an unsolicited email?

Call me a crank, but I can’t help but think we have bigger issues to tackle in this space.

I’ve received mass email communications from personal friends and colleagues who chose to blind copy a whole slew of their contacts in order to communicate something personal, or invite me to participate in a special event. I was glad to be kept in the loop.

I have also received mass email communication inviting me to take a sneak peek at books and other projects to be published about social media from authors I respect. Again, I was glad to have the heads up whether or not the announcement felt personal.

We all use social technology (including email) to take shortcuts in our communication, can’t we allow others to take similar shortcuts at least some of the time?

Honesty over Research

I may be alone here, but I would prefer honesty over cyber stalking with respect to pitches I receive.

I can’t help but wonder whether a better, more human approach to communication might be to cop to a lack of personal reference rather than some sort of ad hoc background check?

I would much prefer something like, “hi, I know we haven’t met or interacted at all, but this post on your site led me to believe you might be interested in this information. Please disregard if this isn’t your thing, or if you have the time, let me know if you think of a way we might be able to work together in the future?”

Admitting to a lack of intimate knowledge seems more human than any amount of doing homework on the front end. Unless, of course, you include the word “contrived” in your definition of what it means to be human. Besides, if you’re unfamiliar with the person’s work you may make the rookie mistake of latching onto some personal detail that seems more important than it actually is.

Besides, I thought content was King

If the content of the message is something I want to know do I really care if anyone took the time to “get to know me” by Googling my name or referencing my favorite band in the communication?

Even when a pitch or some other request is uber-personalized, sometimes it creeps me out a bit when the person takes so much time to talk about me to me, especially when I’m still unclear about what they’re asking me to do for them. I don’t necessarily need to be flattered, but I do value clear, concise communication.

Maybe I’m alone here, but if the content of the message is something I’m interested in receiving, I don’t care if it’s delivered by a spam bot, carrier pigeon, the pony express, my best friend or worst enemy.

I appreciate well-targeted information as much as anyone else, but sometimes I can’t help but think all of us could use someone who might come along and tell us to take a number, especially if it will help us come back down to Earth.

UPDATE
Since so many people liked this post, I decided to write another in the same theme. The Ugly Side of Social Media Part 2: Crap. The next one gets a bit more operational, but you might like it, too.

Photo credit: HK’s creative distraction
Bookmark and Share

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

42 Comments

Filed under communications, pr, social media

Tags: , , ,

Older Entries