Social Media Tools Are Like Phones

Hi Chris,

Great post. I’d a little problem with english, but i understood…

Regards,
Monthiel

“The tools themselves are just different (better?) ways to communicate.”

The question becomes, why are they better? Well, they transcend time and space while maintaining a sense of transparency.

I agree whole heartedly with you Chris. Social Media isn’t the revolution. If anything it’s our train of thought as marketers and sales people. Luckily, I am neither, so it’s easier to indulge in quality resourceful conversations via social media.

Wow the phone analogy is great, but I think you’re wrong about one thing. When phones first started coming into use, we did have to tell people to dial them. It wasn’t hard to do, because dialing was all you could do.

Try showing TweetDeck or Plurk to your grandmother, and you’ll see what I’m saying.

Hey Chris,

Amen! (Hey, you said gospel).

It reminds me of a story our friend David Alston describes from the early days of call center technology. The phone companies had cool tools (automated call distribution, CTI, measurement stats, etc.), but too many companies focused on the technology instead of figuring out how to best use the medium to serve customers effectively. He described an initiative they launched called, “Phone Power” where they essentially set up a training service to educate companies how to make best use of it all to serve customers. This even included best practices for etiquette, response times, workflow, etc. They recognized that success was based on how the tools were used and that there was a knowledge gap that needed to be addressed in order for this to succeed for business.

So you are right on the pin; it is HOW we use the social phone that is key.

Marcel

Really enjoyed this post. The key thing to remember is these ‘tools’ simply amplify behavior we’ve always had. We’ve always searched through the yellow pages. Now we Google. We always got our film developed, now we Shutterfly. We always prioritized who and what was most important to us, so now we get get our messages from iPhone the same way.
The key to employing social media tools is to frame them in the context of making what you already do, better. Super simple, but super effective.

Sending the right message with social networking tools is vital to your personal or business brand. I look forward to reading more on this topic.

Chris –

Great post! The last part rang true: stop saying “join the conversation.” This applies also to speaking with clients, clients who may not know how to pick up the phone. You can’t say “join the conversation” or “pick up the phone” if they don’t know how. I keep these concepts like “conversation,” “participation” and “engaging with the customer” to a minumum when talking to clients. No, they want to see how to use tools, and it’s our job to give them the right tool kit that’s in line with their business strategy so they can make the right phone call (did I just meld together too many of these analogies?).

Also, the way to join the conversation is going to be different for each person. Just like a phone call: for some conference call is best, or calling the operator, or call waiting, or *69. Whatever it is, you’re right, “joining the conversation” becomes a little meaningless!

kate

Hey Chris – some really nice points here. But I’d also love to hear you address “how to use the phone” when the connection is failing, as well as “how to use the phone” when the juice is running out. For the first, how/if social media can be leveraged when traditional advertising methods are failing, and the second, if social media tools can be a more economical approach in a failing economy. Just a bit of food for thought.

Chris-

This past week I met with future client. It was Brandswags first contact with the Church. I started the presentation, attempting to listen to perceptions of Social Media, and their current marketing program.

It was interesting, they are great listeners. There client base shows they are good listeners.

However, when I attempted to get us on the same page of using Social Media first as a listening tool they didn’t seem to care at all.

They wanted to get on with the conversation. I asked.. Why do you want to use Social Media? Answer: That is where a large group of people are.

I think you need a better reason and strategy to use a tool, than just because people are there. That is when listening comes in. While using Social Media to deliver messages, it is as much if not more of a tool to listen, and tap in when need be.

Thanks for the post!

It’s interesting: this is all based on behaviors, on interruptions, on trust, and several other things that have nothing to do with the tools, except that they have everything to do with how we apply the tools. Non?

Fabulous post. I’m a small-town blogger fitting like a square peg in a round hole when it comes to communicating “social media” to friends and others in my community.

I am mostly met with, “I don’t have time for…” The way you explain things here will help me better express why I do this, and maybe flip a few light switches :)

Dear Chris,

You are opening a great debate. I think that the key question is not necessarily the tools as such. As you noticed and beyond the usage of the tool, the fundamental driver is the message and the nature of the interaction.
Whatever the tool, the principle “Garbage In = Garbage Out” is still valid!
I would like to take 2 examples within the marketing area to illustrate my point of view:
- Second Life was a great idea and offered a lot of potential in “connecting” people. However, the potential of the tool has been killed because the original objective to connect virtually individuals has been overtaken by the short term goal of generating business and cash.
- World Of Warcraft (WoW) is a major success story. This profitable business model is based on tangible benefits (The Game and its functionalities) and developments based on the needs of the gamers’ community.

At the end of the day, new social media tools will succeed if they are built on a genuine interaction, if they are supporting messages which are adding value and if the community is keeping the lead over the tool.
It is probably why so many marketing specialists are trying to elaborate on 360° marketing strategies…which are not matching always expectations.

Have a nice day

Frederic Baffou (customercentric.org)

@Frederick – what an interesting topic: Second Life vs. WoW. I hadn’t thought about that. One reason that I think SL failed was that marketers jumped on it so damned fast and hard. I might be stupid, but did WoW *ever* get overrun by marketers? Should it? Could it? (I mean, besides Penn.)

Thanks for letting me start the conversation. Glad everyone answered.

The phone analogy hits the mark on all levels. I notice mine seems to ring less. Even my blackberry is not about the phone, but instead these tools. It’s so important Chris, the work you are doing, keeping peoples mind focused on the full opportunity, and being a voice of intent as opposed to letting it all devolve into silliness.

I hope more folks will join in with new angles, topics, and content, so that the ever expanding quantity can be sustained with a deepening quality…

Interesting points, Chris. Since I have a strong historical bent, I’ve done some musing about how the social media will come, in time, to be regarded as ordinary — just like we now regard motion pictures (“talkies,” even!), telephones, televisions, etc. as ordinary.

As with these other media, the challenges arise when we’re figuring out what to *do* with them. Few people cared about radio when it existed only in the realm of engineers and hard-bitten enthusiasts, but today most of us interact with radio in one form or another without needing to think *about* the medium — we just use it.

Should you be a glutton for punishment — ;) — you can find more of my thoughts along these lines in the link connected to my name here, and in the “Western Union and record labels” post linked from that page.

Hi Chris, this is so very true. And as discussed throughout, tools are designed for specific purposes to help users leverage value. On the surface, although the “feature result” may appear to be the same, your example of “Call Waiting” is a great analogy. “Call Waiting” for a single telephone user is a lot less complex to provide than “Call Waiting” through an enterprise phone switchboard with all the other demands that same enterprise has. As this market grows, we expect we are going to see demand for very comprehensive, yet basically easy to use, functionality to deliver the value and scalability expected by this large, highly complex enterprise user community.

Chris, Thanks for the great article.

One point on “better have operators standing by”.

I think there are already tons of operators standing by in any company.

Many of the 20+ M people in LinkedIn and the 150+M in Facebook and Myspace are employees and most of them listen and engage in conversations that are work related.

I would also argue that people know how to pick up the phone and use it. ( Frank at Comcast seems to do a very good job at using the Tweeter phone :-) ) Actually, generation Y may have learned before we noticed it existed.

Take any sizable company and ask these 3 questions:

- how many of your employees are engaged in social media?
- how many man days are they spending on work related topics in social media ?
- what is the current benefit for your company ( do they learn ?, increase your brand recognition ?, do they sell ? make your customers happy ? or worse…)

So to me the issue is not to teach social media to individuals but for companies to figure out how they leverage it.

Thanks

Love this telephone analogy. What I find fascinating about the evolution of the Web is that not since the invention of the telephone has there been such a fundamental shift in the way people communicate. Before telephones, you had to send letters or telegrams, or actually travel to go speak to someone in person. It took time to get a message to someone.

The invention of the telephone changed all that. Suddenly, communication was instantaneous. It had a significant impact not only on business, but on personal relationships as well – not unlike the impact of social media.

These days we can instantly access people across the world via a variety of mediums. Even so, the basics of how we filter and disperse information with one other has stayed the same. Like you say, it’s not about the tools. It’s about how we use them. Operators might be standing by, but if they aren’t communicating effectively, nobody wins.

Love how @Marcel LeBrun put it above …

“They recognized that success was based on how the tools were used and that there was a knowledge gap that needed to be addressed in order for this to succeed for business.”

So will best practices be identified over time and will they be universal or industry specific?? anyone have a thought on that??

Also, as with the phone’s evolution in use … over time SM will evolve. I mean when the phone 1st came out there was a ‘way’ that it was used … now days we have cell phones and the ‘way’ they are used it completely different than how the phone was used when it 1st came out.

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http://twitter.com/franswaa

ugh i am not crazy about social media but i guess i will just have to roll with the times.

I noticed that Jason Falls had a similar post on his blog recently about escaping the echo chamber among social media consultants.

I had a similar observation after returning from the New Media Expo. Seems like we sometimes get distracted by the next shiny thing and we forget to communicate the benefits to our clients.

One size never did, and never will, fit all.