Every couple of weeks or so, the above question pops up on twitter. And every single time there’s a bunch of PR people claiming that social media is a natural extension of PR, there’s a bunch of ad people trying to claim ownership for the ad agencies and then there’s the odd interactive geek trying to capture the flag for his or her corner of the market.
They are all wrong of course. And not only are they wrong, they are also mired in old thinking.
Social media, by definition, is owned by everybody who chooses to take part in it. Your aunt Flo posting on a gardening board, your 13 year old nephew writing a Star Wars blog, you posting your holiday pictures on Facebook and me writing this. The act of participation is all that’s needed to be part of the community of owners.
The PR and ad and interactive professionals trying to claim the prize for their own industries are thinking about social media as a tool, a channel, a media choice. They are thinking about it as something that they, the experts, are doing to people the same way they wrote press releases or shot commercials or created banner ads.
That of course is the easiest way to guarantee the failure of whatever social media activity you’re planning. A couple of posts ago I wrote about how social media is a natural extension of what humans do by nature – share, communicate, collaborate. And in this day and age, they don’t need mass media to have these conversations, they don’t need permission, they don’t need experts.
So if ownership is ubiquitous, if your voice is just one of many, then all you have to worry about when you’re planning your own social media program is whether you’re making a positive difference. Are you making your customer’s lives better? Are you sharing what you know, are you keeping your promises, are you building genuine feedback channels? If you do then, in our experience, sales tend to follow.
They follow because if you behave like somebody who has my best interest at heart I will gladly purchase your goods and services. Because you’re not doing things to me, you’re doing things with and for me. And that’s all I need to know.
