Social Media bandwagons
We seem to be drowning in online, web and social media conferences, seminars and even summits. Yet very few of the events really inspire. One of the difficulties with the forest of events tagging themselves social media is that most of them are being run from a solely sales and marketing view of online communications and many are run on a sales basis looking at how people gain quick fixes from the convergence of content online and transfer their analogue thinking to a digital habitat. Its the wrong way to start the discussion and probably ensures people miss the nature of what is changing in an online world. For us the journey is a communications one where a Web 2.0 environment, where high speed interactive content meets high speed broadband, is build on relationships and trust rather than exploiting tools to leverage your product. One of the most basic things I try to do in our workshops is underscore the discussion about technology and trends with the fact that what people need to do when they start to see online as a place to do business is to change their mindset, change the way they think about communications and consequently sales, marketing and advocacy.
We had a sales executive in recently who wondered how quickly they would see a return from their online activities. I reminded them of how we build relationships and how we use them. We create an understanding, we exchange information, we build trust and then sometimes we ask each other for help. Translate that to a business relationship with clients or customers and its not wildly different. Social media is about flow, building relationships, maintaining them, feeding them (which is where content comes in) and establishing an understanding or what in business is brand loyalty.
In a digital media landscape of rapid and continuous change the key is to remain open to learning, to growing, to developing. The only thing constant is change the ancient Greek philosopher Heroclitus once said and that is at the core of social media but hand in hand with that is ‘the more things change, the more they stay the same’. In adapting to the new opportunities of interactivity and high speed blogging like twitter the principles of good communications remain the same. Know your audience, understand your message and know where your audience is so you match your message to them. Building strong interactive relationships takes time, but its not a matter of 12 hours a week as one supposed social media guru recently claimed, its about a little often. Feed your relationship, build it and it will grow.