Social Media
Don't Just Be a Business – Be a Social Business
I came away from a business meeting today and I couldn’t stop shaking my head, it seems business owners just can’t see past the next project or payroll deadline. Yes payroll is important, but only looking two weeks out seems like a bad strategy to me, call me crazy. The other funny thing I find with business owners is, they love to be social, take you out lunch, buy coffee and go to business conferences. But why can’t they see there business as social, leveraging their current base of customers through social networks. It seems the “social” part is only something they do personally rather than letting their business be open and social.
Being a social business means you are listening to, interacting with, and letting the conversation be the sell for your business. I understand that scares the day lights out of business owners but, imagine what might happen if you let your client base communicate with you in a more intimate way. Being a social business means you are open and transparent, collaborating instead of dominating, making it easy for your customers to do business with you without the controlling red tape. Giving them simple and easy ways to make payment, providing packaging that’s attention getting and making sure the interface is appealing and easy to navigate. Sounds simple enough doesn’t it, then why isn’t it happening with more regularity?
If you ask a business owner if their customers are the most important part of their business, what do you think they would say? I bet they pat their backs raw with a glowing report on how they support and give their customers the best service. But if you gave the customer an opportunity to answer that question would it be the same glowing review? Allowing your customers to express themselves, and share their experiences in dealing with your brand (you) is a scary thing isn’t it, why? You don’t really believe that you are giving the best service and providing the best products, thats why. If you did you would let your customers speak for you, it’s called word of mouth, and that’s at the very center of what a social business is.
The more digital we get, the more it’s about the experience with a brand, then asking the very people that had that experience, what they thought and how they felt about dealing with you. This is where the trust begins to show itself, if your customers trust your brand and service, you get a good grade, but if not…..
The truth is, business owners have to make a paradigm shift, we are in a connected world and getting more connected each and every day. A connected and networked audience is dramatically different than the audience you used to be able to control. The control mechanism is breaking apart and business owners don’t know how to deal with that problem. You cannot control a connected audience, pure and simple. Why? People are re-grouping on the fly that’s why, they are fickle and always on the move. To keep them you have to do something special, create a magnetic brand that builds attraction and trust, then you can turn that attraction into a transaction.
Business owners think about this, the more in control we (you) are, the more out of touch we become with our customers. Don’t just be a business, be a social business and get connected with them.
So is your business just a business, or is it a social business? If you don’t know or would like to learn what that might look like for your business, attend my workshop April 30th. Send me an e-mail for details and to reserve a seat: owen@owengreaves.com
Guest Post by Ronda Payne – Social Media & Sanity
Ronda Payne
Social Media & Sanity
I’m a writer. Let me rephrase that: I’m a writer and an extrovert. See the problem? I’m an extrovert, passionate about my introverted occupation. So, I built a network through social media to keep me sane.
Not long before taking the freelancing plunge, I created a profile on FaceBook. Friends said it was great to stay in touch, but I mostly used it for games. I’d heard of Twitter but, I couldn’t understand the point. Who cared that I’d just had sushi for lunch?
Within a few months of going out on my own, I began feeling isolated. I missed the ability to shout out my office door and get a reply more significant than the dog poking her head in.
I embraced Twitter. I started ‘following’ local ‘Tweeps’ and other writers. I began to see the point. It was a shout out the office door, a connection with others who were shouting out their office doors. I dropped the games on FaceBook and began status updates and interacting with my ‘friends’.
FaceBook is primarily personal, but sometimes I share with work contacts – it’s relaxed and less tactical. Twitter is more work-related, but I do occasionally mention that I’m going out for sushi for lunch!
Sure, I fell into the ‘time-suck’ trap, then, I got a grip – I check FaceBook in the morning when I start my day, or I’ll pop in if someone sends a note. Twitter, I limit to browsing recent tweets and ‘tweeting back’. I do this only when I take a break to avoid constantly checking in. I don’t scan through pages of tweets – because, like the office door, it’s a moment. It’s okay to miss what someone has shouted out.
Social media has become a manageable, necessary part of my business life and, although I’m on other sites, Twitter and FaceBook are my mainstays. There are people there I look forward to seeing and if I’m facing a challenge, or want to share, I shout out my office door to them.
Sometimes I get an answer, sometimes I don’t. The point is that I can seek out advice from the network I’ve built and know that there are people on Twitter and FaceBook who respond when they can.
While social media is a business tool that allows me to connect with others and discuss work issues, for this extrovert, being able to shout out my office door is a tool to staying sane.
Ronda Payne
The Power of FREE
The Internet is filled with places to get free information, free software, free content, it’s all there for the taking. We can click and get whatever we want right? The Internet is a giant copy machine, we copy everything, imagine what would happen if you took the copy function away, you would lose the the listening function. What would happen then, revolt, maybe the hackers would be the politicians? Pirates would rule the Internet world, how would you stop them or should I say us?
Personally, I think most content should and will end up being free on the Internet, we will figure out how to monetize around that free content, we have no choice, it’s going to happen. There will be wars over intellectual rights, copyrights and royalty fights before it’s all said and done. Access will come before ownership. When we see a threat, we default to protectionism, we should be asking the question, how do we go from copyright to usage rights?
There is so much confusion as to where Social Media is taking us, it’s really reshaping Media to where the new sell is the conversation, the non tangible things matter now more than ever, this is a drastic disruption to old thinking. Why is Social Media so powerful, it’s FREE! You can join any number of Social Networks at no cost, build a following, a brand, and hopefully trust. The best thing is to sell something different like, convenience, experience and trust, generate demand, create new innovation and maybe even add value to the orginal.
Most Blogs provide free content, some have communities attached to them where you pay a small fee to be part of, they add value to a need, that’s one way of monetizing around your content. If you are going to be in this space, you have to decide if you’re going to compete.
Linus Torvalds released Linux back in 1991, Slackware was the first distro to be released, it’s a free operating system that has spawned a number companies that have figured out how to monetize something around the Open Source code. Open is good, it stirs the creative juices, it brings about innovation, and takes creativity far beyond any closed system has ever dreamed of going.
The power of free is far reaching, provides a platform to build something far greater than any one person, we must collaborate to build anything of true value in this attention space. Do you think FaceBook won’t make money from the free to join social network? Where you can be connected to thousands of people, business contacts, business owners at no charge. They will, and it will be astounding how much that will be.
Think of all the things you can get it for free, then think of all the content you can’t get for free, what’s important to you in this circle, that’s what you will pay for. But I can promise you this, if you can get for free, you will, even if it means you have to hunt for it. If you create content of any kind, offer it for free, you will harness the power of your audience. You can’t put content behind walls and generate new money, only in the open can you generate new money, and only then you will see the power of free.
Attention Bloggers & Marketers
The Internets future is of great interest to me, I study some of the worlds smartest technology people because they see things differently than the rest of us. The Futurists are an interesting lot, they even cause me to chuckle now and then, but we need them because it forces us to look outside the box. I share and talk about the possibilities technology can bring, I care very much how it impacts society and our economy’s, plus I love looking into the future.
So I ask you Bloggers & Marketer’s, have you stopped to consider what and how the new economy is going to work, what it might look like, and how it will impact how you Blog and Market? Do you know what the New Economy is? There is and will be a New Economy, it will be The Data Economy, the New Content Economy. We will connect data to data, line to line, not web-page to web-page, this economy will set the table for a revolutionary way of doing business on the Internet. Google is ensuring this will happen, everything will be mobile and on the cloud.
We are entering a time where Command & Control will become Coordinate & Cultivate, where domination is out – and Collaboration is in. Where the current economic egoism no longer works, because now we are all connected, it breeds mediocrity. Mediocrity is what we have / had under the control model. We need to build an Ecosystem, where we freely, openly share & collaborate, with the right blend of sharing rather than piracy. Collaboration is and will be required to build in this new economy.
An entirely new way of thinking comes from being connected, Trust is the Key, Trust is the new currency. This trust will be developed over time, it will make or break organizations and indivduals with large followings and high levels of influence, but this trust won’t come easy. Advertising in the connected world has to be radically different, otherwise it will keep declining. We can no longer market on the Internet by yelling. Marketing needs to hit the RESET button and figure out how to function in the new economy.
Content today is copied, you download a PDF, an MP3 and what have you, it’s a copy. The Internet is a giant copy machine, if you disconnect the copy function, you disconnect the listening function. The fight to keep control of copies is a losing battle on this network, but how do we get the money from a network that can copy everything for free? We need to sell things that can’t be copied, the conversation is the sell. We need to sell things around the content, the packaging, the experience. Money is moving from the selling of copies, to selling the experience. After all, your Brand will be judged by that experience, if it’s bad, you will be out of business sooner than later. You can see the landscape is changing, the end of control is taking shape everywhere.
Social Media is a very human driven practice, it can’t be done with a single person, it just doesn’t scale well that way. Gary Vaynerchuk has shown us how hard it is to keep up and stay on top of all that is data, he won’t be able to sustain the demand on his time and become ineffective.
It’s important to state that Social Media is not about technology, it’s about a culture change, a paradigm shift, we have to get better at believing in the impossible.
We need to think about how we Blog & Market, re-write the books on how it’s done, because what we are doing is a diminishing return. What kind of experience do people have when they come to your Blog, and what kind of emotions are engaged when they see and hear your marketing messages? The power is now in the hands of the people formerly known as consumers, how will you engage them?
You’ve heard this message before a million times, you probably preached it over and over, but the real question is, are you one of the change agents helping shape this new economy? Have you studied what’s to come, do you know and see the indicators? The New Economy views content first as a service, then an experience – and only then (maybe) a product.
I know my voice gets lost in the noise, that’s OK. I know the Internet is a big place, and a very large network that dissects, crosses over and loops back, and some how we are supposed to find what we are looking for. Companies like Google are trying to filter the content and help us all get exactly what we want. But that my friends, is whole nother story. Filtering and curation are the keys to the next phase, and eventually we’ll find ourselves dealing with smart noise.
Are you paying attention, what do you see?
What Is Social Media To You?
I’m certain this isn’t the first time this title has been used for a Blog Post. One of the most confusing things to most business owners and those not technically savvy is, what exactly is Social Media and how will it help me. Social Media in my humble opinion is seriously misunderstood by most. You can tell by how it’s being used for the most part, you can see the traditional marketers doing their typical advertising outbound push. Hell, even some so called Social Media experts are doing the same thing.
The definition of Social Media taken from the Wiki site:
Social media is media designed to be disseminated through social interaction, created using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques. Social media uses Internet and web-based technologies to transform broadcast media monologues (one to many) into social media dialogues (many to many). It supports the democratization of knowledge and information, transforming people from content consumers into content producers.
I’m probably going to do a bad job at sharing this but I’m going to give you some things to think about, a list if you will. Let’s take a peek:
1.) Social Media is a very human driven practice.
2.) Social Media can’t be done or driven by a single person.
3.) Social Media is not about technology
4.) Social Media is about sharing
5.) Social Media is a mechanism in which you are tagged
6.) Social Media is about ubiquity
7.) Social Media is a tool for listening
8.) Social Media is not about pushing your product
9.) Social Media is what e-mail used to be
10.) Social Media is not a channel
11.) Social Media can help build trust
12.) Social Media deepens relationships
13.) Social Media is real-time expression
14.) Social Media is not new, it’s just different
This list could go on and on, I would love to hear from and add to this list.
What is Social Media to you?