I recently read another great blog post from one of my favorites @AmberCadabra called Its ok to backtrack its about a company getting into social media in the not necessarily the best way. A consultant that asks the hard questions and the resulting backtrack that is done to rethink how they use social media. It is a great example of many things including a company that has to rethink their social media strategy. I agree it is always ok to reanalyze your strategy (i believe re-thinking your strategy is a must at all times) but i ask you how far does this backtrack go? Is there such a thing as getting to a place that is too far to backtrack from?
Most of the examples given in the blog entry are not huge mistakes and can be gotten past with relatively small effort. So what if the mistakes made are much larger and create more buzz just about the mistakes? Lets look at an example.
A company lets call them XYZ widgets (i know not creative) This widgets company thinks they need to get into social media so they take all the steps they read about and jumped right in. This company got out there, tries to build community talks about being open, and of course talks about being involved in the conversation. However they forget that being out there and connecting with customers and potential customers is a 2 way street. If people are taking the time to converse with you and give you feedback you don't necessarily have to do every suggestion, but not following up and not doing ANYTHING with it can be disastrous.
The old adage that bad news travels fast can be at play here. If you get out there and are fake, your intent is not to be out there get feedback, converse and help the community, then it will show through. I think people can forgive a lot of mistakes and can see past a lot things. But if you are not being authentic and are just out there to get links, get leads etc and not taking the feedback seriously people will rebel. You will get all kinds of people talking about you, but it will be talking negatively. People will be talking about how you say you are open, you say you want feedback, you say you are there for your customers. If you get out there and you say these things you better be true to it, you better be authentic. If you are not then the consequences will be worse than if you were not there in the first place. Think about how many times a company or person could say they are going to follow up with you or send you something and they never do. Think about about how many times you will put yourself out there looking for some kind of real response.
So i ask you. If you are an user of XYZ widgets, and you are a regular participant in the community what are your expectations of that company. What if that company is regularly involved in the community and loves to talk about wanting your feedback, regularly talks about wanting to connect with you. So in return you try to provide it. You work to give constructive feedback, you are a supporter of the company and you stay involved. What if now, you never see any result of your feedback, you never see any acknowledgement of your suggestions or the like. Are you mad? or are you just glad they asked? Do you begin to to see this company as not being really authentic? Do you start to believe that they are just out there because they think they should be but that they really don't believe in it or truly WANT to be there? If you start to believe that what will your view on this company start to be? And will that start to be worse than if they were not out there in the community at all?
I contend that this lack of authenticity, this FAKE involvement in the community is actually worse than not being involved at all. Think about a company that seems somewhat closed off, and that you don't know how you would give feedback to. How strongly a positive feel do you have for them. Vs your thoughts on a company that is out there, says they are open, and takes feedback but does nothing with it. How positive a feeling do you have for them?
Let me know what you think. Your comments and suggestions are always welcome here. You can find me on Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin. Or you can email me directly chris dot geier at Gmail.com
I think you are on to something here. Of course, everyone and every company knows they should do the right thing and seek to be authentic in everything they do. The challenge comes in when they don't know what to do or at least what to focus on NOW. As with every company there are competing factions for the ever dwindling resources. This is where I see some semblance of order is required. I see a few vendors setting the stage for this. As Socal Media becomes more and more part of the everyday vernacular the big players will jump in with both feet. This is starting a little and depending upon how you define the market they are already there.
ReplyDeleteA challenge that needs to be faced in order to kick start wide spread adoption is one where companies know they have some latitude and can afford to make a few mis-steps. As long as they keep at it and seek continuous improvement.
This falls in nicely with some of the work W. Edwards Deming did around the Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) Cycle. Which was built on top of Shewhart, Taylow, Juran, and nmany others. The point of PDCA is that its never done. Some may see this as a huge negative, but in reality that's how business continue to adapt to changing markets. Adapt or Die.
Companies that take a risk should not be slammed - as long as they keep at it. Vendors can help, users (aka community members can help), and when they combine and work together we will see the rise of corporate authenticity.