Yesterday morning, I received an email from a colleague who is the Chairman of a mid-sized organisation. I’ve been helping him build an understanding of social media and what relevance it might have for him. In that email, he asked me an especially pertinent question.
Is there any reason why the vast majority of executives you talk to are confused over the value of social media, especially monitoring, how it all works, and how to actually get their heads around this stuff?
Interesting question, no?
This is reflective of many of the business people I deal with. They’re curious, but don’t get the language of social media. It confuses them. They’re misled, deliberately or inadvertently into believing social media is about technology. Or that it’s trivially easy. Or quick.
None of those things are true.
So, here’s the answer I gave:
Short answer. Yes there’s a reason. Here it is.
- Language. Most of the people trying to do the explaining fail to understand they need to speak in the language of those they are speaking to. You can’t start off with wikis, blogs, widgets and the
like, though you do have to get there fairly quickly. You need to discuss communications, innovation, R&D, shareholder value, ROI, cost reduction, customer support. These things are the language of business and are how you need to couch your arguments for social media.- Evangelism vs. doing. I’m as big an evangelist as anyone, you have to be. But you need to back it up with a track record of your own, an understanding of what the most recent best examples are around the world (and not just trotting out the same two year old examples everyone does and pointing to the latest flashy, Moby-tracked video with badly researched “facts”), and your own established connection to the people that did the work so you can contact and quote directly. Knowing what’s going on and being able to speak authoritatively and directly or one-removed about it builds trust in you. Just quoting the same old case studies means you’ve read the same blogs and books as everyone else.
- Pace. The pace at which everything happens now has moved. You no longer have 12-24 months to consider something in business, if you do, you’ll be left behind. Connectedness gives us all the opportunity to do things rapidly and innovate on the run. But you need to be ready to move at this pace as an organisation. Which leads me to…
- Culture. Here’s where everyone who gets it wrong usually goes wrong. The culture shift in business, indeed in life in general, that comes with working in a world where social networking and social media (yes, they are different but most people don’t understand the difference) surrounds what you do is fundamental. There are potentially significant shifts in the culture of business to be made. Start your reading with The Cluetrain Manifesto (it’s the grand-daddy of books on the new way of doing business). If you can’t get the culture right and have people along on your ride, your efforts are doomed.
- Technology. The inexperienced leap directly to technological solutions for human problems. No wonder it doesn’t work and is confusing. The people problems and cultural issues must be resolved first. It’s in the rarest of cases the the Field of Dreams approach works, and technology, well considered, is probably the least of your problems in this whole thing. Think carefully and plan for the technology, but don’t do so at the expense of the culture issues.
Last, and without a number, understand by doing. You can’t have credibility in or understanding of the social media world without using it and being a part of the community. Listening, conversing, contributing, learning, observing. If you’re just doing the last and observing from the outside, it will make no sense.
As an example, imagine if all these missives the Chairman fires out by email were instead posted on a blog for company staff, or even on the public web site? Imagine the additional contribution, the understanding, the value, that could be built by using that as a platform for discussion and thought leadership?
Despite seeming simple to those of us in the bubble (and many of us, I believe, don’t adequately understand this stuff and are doing the rest of us a disservice by trying to sell their services underdone), this stuff isn’t. It’s a fundamental shift to many people and is both confusing and frightening to them.
If your job is helping people to understand social media, you need to do it well.
