I know, sounds a bit ridiculous doesn’t it? But in essence, that’s exactly what many businesses are doing these days by either being absent from the social media channels or misusing them. Are you saying this to YOUR customers and employees without even knowing it?
Social media was
designed to create ENGAGEMENT and SHARING, aka, word-of-mouth. This is where it shines and where it has its power and strength for individuals, businesses,non-profit organizations and associations. It was NOT designed to be a bullhorn or megaphone and shout out to as many people as you can how wonderful you are! Unfortunately, that is where many businesses and organizations are in their use of social media today.
Social Media gives us, for the first time ever in our lifetime, the ability to build greater trust and stronger relationships faster and deeper by being connected with our audience and offering “content” they find valuable. It is important to remember that people DON’T SHARE advertisements (unless of course it was the original Old Spice commercial) – they share content they feel is helpful to their audience. If you arm them with this type of content, you are giving them a reason to share it because it is valuable to them and many in their audience.
By not using social media, it is like asking your customers not to talk about you or tell anyone else how great you are. You basically are saying that while you do good work or have great products, we would rather you only told people once in a while and one-on-one instead of a larger audience. You have essentially taken “leveraged WOM” (word-of-mouth) out of their hands and disabled their ability to share it with their audience. Let’s say you have developed a new way to help your customers create more business for their own company – and they love the concept. How do they tell their audience about what you did for them?
They may have already have set up some social media channels and would like to share this great concept with their colleagues and customers. If so, they are ready to go and want to talk about it, and you, on the airwaves. Where can they get their hands on this special type of content to share and spread around in their networks? It won’t be from your website in the majority of cases because that is all about selling yourself and things. So where do they go to get this “other content” to share? Nowhere, is unfortunately the answer for most. Now if you had a blog and were blogging about these customers, they would be able to jump on board and link to your content and distribute it to their audience – and many many many more people would know about you and what you do.
By not participating the “right way” and having a solid Social Media Strategy in place, you can’t arm them and they can’t share it freely. You just told your customers not to talk about you openly and freely to thousands of people. When you put it in this context, why would anyone not want to have a solid social media strategy that encourages WOM and allows them to share. I haven’t found a good reason yet why anyone would want this to happen, yet there are still thousands of businesses and other organizations out there staying out of the social media pool. I have to admit, I just don’t get it…but if you have a different perspective, share it and let me know.
