If your social business designs reach beyond getting quick marketing hits, this point cannot be over-emphasized.
Your ultimate objective is not the “like”.
The end destination is not for someone to follow your page on Twitter or on Google+. It is not for your employees to fill out their profile on the company social network. It is not to add people’s LinkedIn profiles to your CRM system and call it social. It is not to get people to click the link and read your blog post, believe it or not.
Those are mechanisms that further your business objectives. They’re the supporting goals and tactics that absolutely must tie into the big picture to be worth a salt, and they are not the big picture in and of themselves.
Do you see the difference?
I’m surprised I’m still writing posts like this, and it’s nothing that hasn’t been said before, truthfully. So why am I bothering?
This is the kind of thinking that’s fundamentally dismantling conversations that could be taking social business discussions so much deeper, making them agnostic to the ever-changing media and adaptable to an evolving business model. Our love for and easy focus on the quick, visible click so quickly thwarts conversations that can and should be talking about much more foundational concepts: building a social layer into our entire business based on the intent to improve communication and collaboration across the board.
It’s also why contests as incentives to participation – i.e. “like our page for a chance to win a $500 gift certificate!” or “fill out your company network profile to win a Panera card” – so often end as suddenly as they begin, and cause the “this social media thing doesn’t get any return” comments. You’ll get a flood of participation that gets you excited, until it dies. They’re cheap highs, designed to give you the illusion that you’re heading somewhere with blinding momentum, yet most businesses are still lacking a fundamental vision of where “somewhere” really is.
If your business planning and discussions start with the “why” behind your desire to be a more social organization and focus on how social can and should enable every aspect of your business, ultimately if a goal becomes getting more attention for your Facebook page, you’ll understand the driving purpose behind it and have a plan for keeping those contest entrants connected after the fact. (If you’re *really* smart, you’re going to create a campaign that’s designed around prospect profile and not just a spike in eyeball volume, but that’s another post).
All of the presence tools are the visible tip of what should be a deep and broad social iceberg under your company’s surface.
And if they aren’t? If the discussions we’re having in our company or with our clients are about “how do we get more likes?” and we aren’t diplomatically but firmly explaining why that’s the wrong focus for social initiatives and insisting that a valuable program must start with a different conversation, we become part of the problem.
The maturity of social business is about a return to sound strategic principles while adapting to the implications and opportunities that accompany a more open and connected way of working, inside and out. A realization of those values is the end state. The tools are just one (small) part of the means.
When we are courageous enough to insist on those priorities, in that order, the picture of successfully social companies will become much clearer indeed.
Amen!
Preach it! 🙂
It’s amazing to me how many clients of mine still ask me, “How do I get more likes?!” I just look at them and say, “Why do you care about numbers?” Their response is usually stuttered but they come up with something like, “Well isn’t that what you’re supposed to do?”
D’oh! Like you said, it’s shocking you have to write a post like this, it should be obvious by now. But numbers still continue to dominate our society because company’s would rather have 20,000 followers and zero engagement. I really hope there’s a shift coming in which engagement is going to be more popular than numbers.
One of my peeves is folks who think the Internet is some kind of magical mystical voodoo place where all the rules and concepts that apply to every other business model simply don’t apply and can be safely ignored.
Thank you, Amber. That is all. 🙂
A local restaurant uses its Facebook page to announce daily menu specials and the occasional band featured that night. Nothing else. They have over 700 people who clicked that Like button. Yet less than 5 people comment on average, if at all.
I noticed this, and posed a comment to them about breathing some life into their updates, getting away from the menu updates now and then. Their response was what I expected, that because they’re getting those comments something is working. They clearly don’t understand Edgerank nor the social side.
Amber, I completely agree with you. I had a chat today with someone who’s whole goal was to “put bums in seats” for the classes he was offering.
Well social media can help with that. If the messages are heavily focused on register, register, register – he’s going to fail.
I agree changing how we do business is critical. Changing how we think is critical.
I do however think that the number of followers/likes do play a role, albeit a small one. If you have a page with 10 likes and a page with 10000 likes, even the majority of that 10000 are disengaged, th shear numbers will likely guarantee that you message is seen and conversations ensue.
But becoming too heavily focuses on likes can definitely instill a false sense of success.
Thoughts?
I do apologize for some typos. I sent it on my iPhone.