Open for business (December 4, 2010)
Organisations of all types and sizes are currently engaged in social media experiments. Very limited, very cautious experiments. A little measurement here, a bit of coy chat there, you know how it is, we're currently in that in-between stage — curious but fearful of leaving known comforts for the brave new world. Where are you and your organisation in this spectrum:
1. Conservative — traditional marketing and pr + some social media monitoring
2. Progressive — senior managers blog, some tweets broadcast. Marketing orchestrate and tightly control all that's said
3. Enlightened — blogs and tweets flow, communication rules have been replaced with principles that protect personal, organisational and client interests. *Everyone* knows the values and opinions of the organisation. Conversations across porous boundaries are natural, human, honest, accountable
Level 2 organisations are giving social media a trial run but their understanding is still entombed in old-marketing paradigms. They have fears. Nightmares actually. Someone might do something like this…(pokey tongue shot of my daughter) metaphorically speaking.
Speaking openly about my own characteristics, I'm an odd mixture: a techy with EQ. I like facts not waffle, I love straight-forward honesty. Here's the worrying bit…even if being honest is going to cost me somehow, I will say it any way. Can't see the point in not!. All this means I can be seen as a maverick. Yet it's my belief that people want transparency and honesty, they want to know you're capable of saying *this is the wrong product for you, I shalln't take any more of your time* if that really is the case. My daughter has inherited a fair number of my wacky genes; she has the ability to shock me to the core and yet she is loved for her honesty and good heart.
Organisations cannot afford gaffs; leaks of a confidential matter, betrayal of a commercial secret or an expression of a sentiment, opinion or idea that's orthogonal to the group. So being a level 2 is seen as the practical solution. Audiences, however, know they're not getting the real deal. They're not seeing the people. This is the main difference between levels 2 and 3. It is the existence and universal understanding of a set of guiding principles. Rules and principles differ greatly, the latter offering a great deal of flexibility over the former. Take for example the stick man below. He's throwing and catching a package. Never once does he drop and break the item. So he's never broken the rule which states: "do not drop". But he has violated the principle: FRAGILE.
To be a genuinely social organisation, the old rules of marketing have to be binned. People across the organisation need "to be on the same page" if they're to tweet, blog or write comments in the open forum of social media. To get to level 3 involves:
1. Trusting a wider group of people to engage directly with their peers and audiences (internal and external)
2. Equipping the organisation with a set of guiding principles — see Values and Opinions
3. Working through the pain of level 2
4. Scrapping old-world paradigms and replacing the velvet tongue of marketing with the authentic voice of individuals
An organisation that's genuinely open — engages with competitors to discuss ideas, engages with audiences openly and frankly — is not the same as the one that thinks the illusion of one-to-one marketing is a great ambition. The promise of 1-to-1 marketing appeals to the old-world marketer.
A social organisation is one that's confident in the power of ad-hoc, transparent communication. A social organisation empowers its people to engage in open conversation. A social organisation participates in authentic dialog not pseudo 1-to-1 marketing. A social organisation is *open for business* in a very real sense.
