There is clearly a lot of concern over companies entering the social media space. It’s a new medium to be a part of and companies aren’t sure how to act or how to respond to certain situations, for example negative feedback. I though it would be interesting to compare social media actions with real world actions to show that there are indeed a lot of parallels as far as actions go.
Real world
Walk into a cocktail party
Social media world
Sign up for an account on a social media platform such as Twitter or Facebook
Real world
Start talking to people at the cocktail party
Social media world
Start engaging in conversations on social networks
Real world
Somebody starts saying negative things about you. You approach them and try to figure out what you did to offend them, perhaps apologize and buy them a drink. If that doesn’t work just understand and respect that you have differing opinions.
Social media world
You start receiving negative feedback across social networks. Respond by explaining yourself through a blog post or individual message. State that you are willing to work with users to help identify and resolve any issues. Apologize for any inconvenience caused to the users and make sure you act and respond to user feedback. Understand that there may always be people out there who try to bash your brand, there is nothing wrong with negative feedback as long you respond appropriately.
Real world
Use a megaphone to try to speak with everyone at the cocktail party at once. People will hate you and learn to ignore you.
Social media world
Get as many friends or followers as you can and start sending them out links, marketing messages, and product offerings. Again, people will hate you and learn to ignore you.
Real world
Have a conversation with a small group of people who share your similar interests or fans of your work. These people will want to connect with you and stay in touch with you once the cocktail party is over.
Social media world
Connect with people who share similar interests. Respond to messages and requests. Focus on the interaction and the relationship and not so much on trying to push across a piece of content. If you can provide something of value to your connections, then they will turn into brand evangelists over time.
There are probably a few other scenarios that you can think of in the real world that are easily translated into social media world scenarios. At the end of the day though we are dealing with real people and real connections, don’t forget that
Great post, this is exactly what I talk about when I say in my vids that, Social media is all about talking with people, not to people.
Conversation leads to trust and confidence. Where the flow leads from there could be anywhere but the 1st step is engaging with people who connect with you.
I’d like to share with your readers my vids on http://www.seovice.com
Keep the great posts coming.
Jacob, excellent thoughts here pinpointing the question: why do people act differently (and less intelligently) in a social network setting than they do in real life? That is, in response to negative criticism, the logic of real life can also be applied to a response in an online community. Simple, but profoundly good advice.
I really like this post. I wanted to share it. I tried to follow the link to “Jacob Morgan’s site.” It’s broken. Cause it has 2 http://’s. So I took out the first one and interestingly it kept rerouting the link to wikipedia. I eventually realized that the second http was missing the colon. Also, the trackback link just displays an error. Please fix!
All companies need to find their groove with the social landscapes in order to make it work. Each company will and should have a different approach.
Hi Jacob,
Excellent post. Love the comparison to the megaphone lol.
Straightforward and right on parallels
Dali Burgado
When it comes down to it social networking has a culture like everything else we do. This post gets at that. Social networking should be about building relationships and making them move in some way to the real world.
I think these comparisons are great and I will be sharing them!
Thanks,
Steve
Nice post. Do you agree that social media world is beneficial to those who are introverts? or it doesn’t at all?
@oren
glad you enjoyed the post and yes i will do my best to keep bringing great posts:)
@walter
thank you!
@cel
thanks for pointing that out, i sent an email to ann and she said she can fix it so let’s hope it gets corrected soon.
@nick, dali, steve
thanks for the comments and for the kind words, hope to be seeing you folks more around here!
@eq2
i think it goes a bit beyond that. it benefits whoever is using social media to achieve their goals regardless of personality type. i know introverts and extroverts that are quite frequent social media users
thanks jacob. love the analogy…you made it really simple to ‘get it.’
You forgot the part about how in person someone that is negative toward you can get punched in the face or can otherwise start a physical alteraction.
It’s much less likely someone WILL say anything negative in your presence… which is why I think people have trouble dealing with negativity on the web because it was such an uncommon occurrence in real life.
When I receive criticism online my heart gets pumping just like it did when people got in my face in real life.
Fighting words online never lead to real fights, so the anger is misplaced but still hard to keep under control.