Skip to Content

Sarah Tapley

Not everyone is social in the offline world and I meet so many people who are afraid to be social in the online world. If I can’t find something to say in person, what do I say online?

That’s an excellent point and troublesome now that social is how we reach an audience for our business. But while being social is powerful and builds the connective tissue that results in loyalty and reach for a social business, conversation isn’t the only side of it.

Sharing is Social

Sharing great content is social. That might seem obvious but by segmenting out the acts of sharing content from engaging in conversation, those who don’t like to converse so much can find a place in this space.

Most of us live a portion of our lives online and we all find great content every day that is relevant to our business and what we do. Share it! Your target audience wants to see what engages you and it will help to shape your brand. Articles, resources, instructional videos, infographics, photos – anything that can be helpful to your clients and imply what is important to you in what you do.

So there is a place for the quieter people amoung us. If you can’t speak, just share.

Who do you know that has a lot to share but is reluctant to? How might you encourage them?

Note about the photo above: Sarah Tapley is a new Member of Learn by Sociallogical™ and is a design guru with Tuck Studio and Punch Inside. She spends each day with her nose in countless amazing design websites, her hands on the creation, assembly and display of super interesting design products, and listening to what inspires clients the most about the spaces they live and work in. Of course Sarah has a ton of great things to share! In fact, much of what Sarah has to share doesn’t even need words. (Photo credit: Kelly Lawson)

Apples and oranges

Social is the first truly new gift to humanity that the Internet has ever given us. It makes sense that it is going to take some time and a little effort to understand it and let it soak into our daily lives because nothing about it feels natural to anyone in the beginning.

Postal Mail Goes Digital

First, the business world was given email. Some whined and complained about this new intrusion of technology (and expectation of quicker response times) into our daily work lives, but we adapted quite easily because we understood it immediately.

We’ve had postal mail for centuries and this was just an electronic version of it. We all “got” it.

Print Materials Go Online

Then came the business web with the release of Netscape and the modern web browser that let us easily “surf” web pages made by fellow business people, academics, and government. Many resisted the demands their customers placed on them to make their information known through the web but we all eventually found our way there and built web pages for our businesses.

We understood it simply because the early business web really just took the information from our print materials – brochures, business cards etc. – and put it on this new digital interface. Just a fancy version of our print materials, right?

Social Media Enables Digital Humans

But then social media emerged that allowed one or a massive number of people to connect to one or a massive number of people with text, voice, video and more and that has never been possible before in human history. Anybody can produce a media empire, free of the financial and infrastructure barriers that used to exist in earlier eras.

Social media enables digital humanity. That’s a statement that is almost meaningless as social media is just social now. It’s not the special circumstance in which we connect like a conference used to be, it’s now the main method of connecting. If it isn’t for you, should it be? Or does your business have a few good reasons for not becoming social?

Social is not a new internet. It is you – online. The social layer is the layer of human meaning and stickiness to an otherwise cold digital channel. Embracing that human element and making it work for your business is the pursuit of becoming a social business.

obama-fist-bump

Getting someone who is not you to “be you” online is strange to me. It’s like asking someone else to go on a date for you. Not only do you miss out on the engagement and enjoyment of the date, but it is also fake and downright creepy.

But what you say and what you share are two different things. I can get an associate to speak on my behalf and share my interests and positions, as in the case of a lawyer or a press agent, but I would never ask either one of them to actually pretend they are me and imitate my voice when talking to people. It’s kind of funny when you think of it.

That’s why I have resisted potential clients who have sought to just pay someone to do their social media for them. Instead, I offer them an understanding of the phenomenon so they can take the reins on their online engagement.

The content you base your conversations on

But some aspects of social media marketing need special skills and reap special benefits. For example,

  • creative agencies can come up with brilliant ways to tell your brand’s stories that are compelling, entertaining, and sharable.
  • researchers can collect fantastic data that you can turn into consumable, memorable, and sharable infographics that your clients will love.
  • curators who know your brand and what interests your clientele can find great, sharable content that others have made for you to share on your social channels.

That last point, curated sharing, is the one that most businesses jump into, with varying degrees of success. Most people understand, from as far back as high school, that who and what they are associated with impacts how others see them. So finding great stuff to associate themselves with and share online is something most of us naturally start doing when we plug our businesses into social.

Although it can be time-consuming and a major distraction, you do know (or should) what content is most interesting and helpful to your clients. And the content you find (vs. content you create) is the most readily available source for your social channels.

Curate great content for a few great reasons

  1. Define your company’s brand by what you associate it with. It looks good when you demonstrate you know what your customers care about.
  2. Expand the ‘scope of interest’ for your brand by sharing a diverse selection of topics, giving you a wider potential audience for your content.
  3. Add layers of sophistication to your brand by finding content that compliments your own content.

Of course, you need to come alongside the content you are curating with content you are creating and conversations you are sharing based on all of it. That’s where the social, human element comes in and without it you’re going to have a hard time gaining or keeping your target client’s attention.

The point of selecting great content to share, above all, is to be helpful and interesting to the people you want to attract to your brand community. It is a discipline every company should be exercising as a basic, foundational social media investment.

Mr. Fantastic

Here’s a simple suggestion when considering whether your profiles and activity online are “authentic”: if someone who only knew you online met you in person would they be surprised?

No one should ever be surprised by your appearance or your behaviour because you are the same person online and off. The online you matches the in-person you. I think it is unwise to risk deceiving and likely disappointing others who otherwise had no expectations of you except for the inaccurate and inauthentic version of you that you carefully cultivated for them.

“When you stop expecting people to be perfect, you can like them for who they are.”
― Donald Miller, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life

Why is authenticity important?

Many people are complaining that the word authentic is over-used and has lost its meaning (here are a few). That may be true but words often lose their impact when their meaning is forgotten.

Here are the first definitions for the word “authentic” from Dictionary.com:

  1. not false or copied; genuine; real: an authentic antique.
  2. having the origin supported by unquestionable evidence; authenticated; verified…

Relationships are investments we ask others to make in us and no one wants to make a bad investment. So, like it or not, we carefully choose who we’d like to get to know better based on the evidence we have and we invest accordingly. And just like buying a product that doesn’t match the marketed promises, disappointment can lead a person to devalue their investment and invest no more.

Who wants that? Some even define the difference between expectations and reality as stress! Who wants to cause stress to a potential friend?

By removing the filters and presenting ourselves as authentically as possible we can have confidence that few will be cashing in the investments they have made in us. We can trust that they know the real us and that our relationship won’t be undermined by some revealed truth in the future. Authenticity puts our relationships on a more sure footing.

We all do it.

We have all written resumes that embellish, put on clothes, makeup, or a hairstyle that skews our appearance, and changed our vocabulary to match the person we’re talking to.

Most of us find it hard to talk about ourselves. A few years ago when reviewing my online profiles I found it hard work to come up with creative ways to explain myself. So I decided to stop it and make it simple. I started with “culture change excites me”, because it does, and I went from there. My avatars turned into simple pics of my face in the kind of clothes I wear every day (I wear a suit and tie maybe a dozen times each year) and my most recent pic was taken by my wife, unplanned, on a day I hadn’t shaved (which is once or twice a week).

The goal is to be you. We are already interesting and attractive to people who we would want to get to know better and possibly work with or else why would we? The effort to deceive always backfires.

Take a look at your profiles and some of the things you have shared recently. Would someone be surprised by any of it if they met you and spoke to you in person?

Journalist

We’re in the content marketing era, which is more show and less tell. Clients don’t want you to tell them how great you are through advertising, they want you to show them value at the start of the relationship.

Every business has stories to tell and needs to inform, educate and be useful to clients through great storytelling. We tell stories across social media channels, blogs, and through opinion pieces, research, comments and even through our products and services themselves.

“Journalism is the art of storytelling.”

If you look at what a journalist learns it’s easy to see that having their skill set in-house is a huge asset for any company that knows how important content/inbound marketing is.

I combed through the course lists for a few journalism schools online and collected a sample of course titles that I believe make my point well:

  • Journalistic Writing: the Language of Storytelling
  • Editing, Publishing and Producing
  • News They Can Use
  • Reaching the Public: Fundamental Skills in Strategic Communications
  • Magazine Production
  • The Business of Communications
  • Copy Editing
  • Critical and Opinion Writing
  • Advanced Research Methods
  • Advanced Feature Writing
  • Advanced Photojournalism
  • Understanding Multimedia Journalism
  • Video and TV Journalism

As traditional media fades away, the content that will create awareness and demand for what we sell, more and more, will need to be created, not bought. We need to share more and advertise less. Our clients need to find media-rich and useful content specific to their needs when they find us.

Content Marketing is Storytelling

Journalists are trained storytellers. They are researchers, writers, listeners, and able to think from a variety of perspectives. That skill set is perfect for creating content that online communities would find interesting, useful, or even entertaining.

Here’s what the most awesome journalists do really well:

  1. Their work makes you want to keep reading
    Writers who enjoy telling stories write things you don’t want to put down. Does their work just report the facts or do they tie key points together nicely and in an entertaining way that makes you want to keep reading?
  2. They like playing with new technology
    New communication and productivity tools emerge all the time and each evolution offers new advantages and new ways to tell stories. The journalist you want needs to keep your company engaging and, as journalists know well, the medium is often the message.
  3. Their work compels you to share it with others
    A great storyteller will compel you to share their stories with others. Your content needs to be shareable if it is going to generate awareness and demand for your brand’s offering.

The Need For a Bias

The culture of non-bias that many journalism schools have ingrained in students can be a bit tricky for marketing.

Your company should have a bias. Your bias and your approach to what your clients need and the unique way that you meet that need differentiates you from your competitors and brings choice to the marketplace. The people you hire for any role in your company need to understand your unique approach well, support it, and speak from that biased perspective every time they speak for you. Non-bias does not lead to engagement that sticks and stickiness is what you’re after.

I have worked with amazing journalists who have turned out to be the best storytellers any business could hire. They have the skill set I know our company needs for our content marketing and we plan to hire more of them in the coming years.

A business needs to show their value with great content instead of just telling people how amazing they are through advertising and contrived efforts. People will come to your party but if the vibe isn’t good, they’ll sneak out the back door.

As traditional media loses its punch, I hope more and more journalists will look to marketing departments to find a new home. Our businesses need you whether they know it yet or not.

Do you plan to hire a journalist to join your marketing team?

The Social Media Ecosystem Report - Rise of Users, Intelligence and Operating Systems

With such rapid change and extreme disruption to business caused by social media in recent years, many wonder where this is all headed. How about if we start with where we are now?

This Fall the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) released a comprehensive paper on the state of the social media ecosystem which, for those who need to deeply understand something before investing in it, is very insightful and appears very accurate. As expected, it’s not an entertaining piece, but it’s worth a read over the weekend and for holding on for future reference.

You can grab the report titled The Social Media Ecosystem Report – Rise of Users, Intelligence and Operating Systems. Below are a few excerpts that jumped out for me as valuable, sometimes surprising, and sometimes validating of my suspicions.

What do you think? Does this information confirm or will it change any of your business plans?

“You as a brand have to be completely confident about your position, because you will get criticism. You will have a negative reaction.  If you didn’t get a negative reaction, that means you’re standing neutral and you have no point of view.  Who wants to participate in that?” ‐ Frank Cooper, CMO Global Consumer Engagement, PepsiCo

“Facebook and Twitter have become online gate keepers to all things social”

“Gameification is the most common tool for glossing over the lack of a value proposition (i.e., when tools and apps offer little or no true functionality) – it appeals to users’ desire to acquire and amass things (real or fake) that show status.”

“The social ecosystem is anchored by platforms (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Path) that focus on users’ relationships (i.e., the “social graph”) and offer broad utility and interaction…, interest based platforms (e.g., Fancy, Spotify, Pinterest) offer broad functionality but are vertically focused, engaging the user’s “interest graph”.”

“LinkedIn has been building off its “professional graph” to create an “economic graph”, wherein professional identities – on a global basis – are available, making it easier for both human resources and capital to flow to where they can best be leveraged.”

“Social media services have begun to significantly transform the way businesses interact with each other, both internally, on an enterprise level, and externally, with customers.”

“Apart from CRM, enterprises are also using social media for internal non‐customer facing initiatives, such as talent management and resource optimization.”

“A new breed of Social Intelligence companies – technology driven agencies – will be charged with generating actionable insight and defining social ROI.”

“A brand’s social strategy starts with identifying its entire audience on and off channel, segmenting the audience into different types of users, and developing an engagement strategy for each type.”

“Success is uniquely defined by each company and its own campaign approach or goals.  The ultimate goal is to amplify the earned media to shift or decrease the total media cost for brands.”

“There is no silver bullet in social media marketing, and success must be uniquely defined.”

“Social media has introduced a new form of communication between consumers and brands that allows for an around‐the‐clock, real‐time marketing and interactive customer experience.  Consumer adoption of social will continue to proliferate as companies offer high value and relevant engagement opportunities.”

A phone call with Santa

Online social media can draw people to your brand community and help return humanity to the world of business but it will never get rid of one-on-one voice conversations.

On one end of the bell curve are those who wish all human interaction could be kept to text and under their personal control. They see phone calls and postal mail as ‘so last century’, so they shun it as much from a sense of personal style as from a need to feel productive.

On the other end are those who are offended by the new social media and the distance it seems to breed between people. Completely misunderstanding what social media is and how it accomplishes just the opposite, they fear it will erode society through disconnection and lack of community.

Somewhere in the middle are those who are learning to use all tools for what they do best. And in this spectrum will always be a very important role for voice conversations that we’ve always known as ‘phone calls’.

Why one-on-one conversations are so important

One-on-one conversations are disruptive. It’s hard to do much else when you’re having a conversation with someone else so multitasking must stop while you focus on the other person. This drives some people crazy.

One-on-one conversations are so important because they communicate importance. If your goal is to communicate how valuable another person is to you, dropping what you are doing and giving them your attention is a great way to do this.

Why my Mom gets a phone call

Our family is currently expecting a baby and, as of today, we are 11 days overdue. Many people we love want to know what’s going on and want to hear from us as soon as there is news. Most will find out when we post news online but my Mom wants a phone call.

To call my Mom and let her know what is happening with our baby’s birth I need to set aside a few minutes to do nothing else but talk to her, just like in the olden days. But doesn’t she deserve this? Shouldn’t people in our lives like our mothers receive this top-level treatment in which we drop what we are doing and make them our priority for a few minutes now and then?

The same efforts that keep you close to your Mom can also keep you close to your clients.

What qualities do you bring to your business?

We value various types of communication partly based on the investment required for the communicator to share it. We are so deeply offended by businesses who automate their communication too much because we feel we deserve more. We are giving them our money, after all. We also still cherish handwritten or signed letters or even requests for a video conversation because we appreciate the cost in time and effort involved for the other person to share with us in these ways.

I’m obviously not against all forms of automated communication and I am certainly not against one-to-many social media sharing. But it’s important to recognize what each type of communication costs us and what we can expect from the relationships we feed with it.

Online social media keeps people connected to us and our brands. It keeps us on their minds, adds value if we are sharing helpful content, and allows us to keep personal connections alive the same way our grandfathers used to tip their hats and share a kind word with their neighbours (and their customers) on the street. But social media only enables a personal connection if we personally invest in it.

The technology will change but ‘phone calls’ or one-on-one voice and video conversations will never come to an end for any business that wishes to bring people close and to build community around their brands. A business can’t chat with every customer. But every conversation they do have is an investment in relationships that should matter to a business.

Call your customers now and then, just to say “hi” or offer some friendly advice. Be cautious not to waste the other person’s time, but if you know your contact is wanted or even requested your interest in wanting them to stay close to you will be understood better than with an email or a social network post. And that investment is worth so much more to the success of your business than extreme efficiency in how we communicate.

Do you shun the phone or embrace it as a powerful relationship building tool for your business?

The photo above is of me talking to Santa Claus on the phone, Christmas Eve 1978 – obviously proud that Santa would take a minute of his time to call me on his big night!

MARCIO JOSE SANCHEZ/AP

What I noticed most about the launch of the new iPad Mini by Apple Senior Vice President Phil Schiller this week is that he did not sell us on how this new device will change our lives. That’s what Steve would have done.

He would have reenacted dreams of our childhood made real by this new device. He would have painted an irresistible brand picture for it that would make it feel like it belonged in its own category of product; something we hadn’t already seen many times before. Instead we were sold on specs. There was certainly a romantic praise for the industrial design that Apple always deserves, but he gave us information, not religion.

Absent was a play to the emotional, personal experience that indicates a true understanding of what Apple customers want that Steve never missed. Was this device created because competitors’ success indicated a demand for this type of device? Or did they build something that would make their buyers lives better? That’s what Apple used to always strive for. That narrative was weak this time.

‘Belonging’ Strengthens Brand Communities

Apple taught us that we should build a community around our brands. They did it before social media and now they continue to do it without brand-generated social media. Despite their heavy use of traditional advertising and marketing they still connect with their community (advertising on social channels is not a very social use of media).

Here are 3 things Apple used to do better than it does today that any brand can learn from:

  1. Demonstrate understanding.

    Your products and services should always communicate that you understand your customer. Not just what they want to pay you for, but that you understand them as people. You know how they live, what’s important to them, and what they enjoy and don’t enjoy.

  2. Communicate emotion.

    Information won’t accomplish anything unless it stimulates an emotion that supports your brand. Make your customers feel nostalgic, unique, or even afraid if that’s what they want and expect from you. Stephen King told beautiful stories, but fear needed to be part of them to satisfy his community.

  3. Share the experience.

    Regard your company, products, and services the way you want your customers to so you can authentically project that regard on to others who might want to be part of it. Company + Customers = Community.

Steve Jobs knew these pillars of branding better than anyone. Without being social he still used that channel for viral reach by pushing traditional media buttons: PR, advertising, events, etc. He made Apple a company that could carry out these 3 brand goals using the old ways. Imagine what a brand could do if it reached for these goals with social media.

How would you pursue these 3 goals with your brand?

water blast

We’re blowing our brains out on having everything that we ever wanted available, and then some, and we are unplugging.

Niche Communities Rule

There are so many interesting people to connect with, so much unique and varied entertainment, an entire world’s collection of information available that people are filtering – they have to!

Reaching a target market is not about standing out anymore, as much as it is about standing for and offering something that people can identify that they need and care about. They’ll find you when they need you. And when they do, you want your COMMUNITY speaking for how great you are, not just your marketing.

People don’t have the time or the patience for the distractions that so many brands are throwing out. To win people’s attention in Branding 1.0 we became loud, aggressive, and sometimes offensive to grab everyone’s attention. Branding 2.0 is about being really great and known for one specific niche that has its own community of buyers and boosters.

We’re Exhausted and People are Beginning to React

Nobody wants the chaos that extreme indulgence in multi media – social, entertainment and knowledge media included – breeds. We’ve been there and we can’t take it. We’re starting to learn to filter noise and only let in what we believe will enrich our lives.

Brands should respect this and focus on being good and available. If not, you, too, will be filtered and ignored.

How are you filtering media in your own life? How is your business speaking to your niche audience so you don’t get filtered?

Mature

In the mainstream, people are no longer excited just to be using social media. Users are becoming sophisticated about how they allow themselves to be interrupted by notifications and how they filter people and content based on their interests. This inevitability has implications for business and presents challenges especially for businesses who have been slow to embrace it.

The Fad is Over

The fad phase is over. That doesn’t mean it is going away, it means online social discourse is the norm. As a society, we’re not going back to relying solely on traditional media and the trends toward social will continue in that direction. But businesses can’t count on just being there to ensure success in reaching their communities.

The novelty of making a video, posting a tweet, or writing a blog isn’t enough for your audience anymore.

In the same way, just creating an event on Facebook or Google+ and sharing it is not enough to get people’s attention anymore. Social media has become overwhelmed by events, especially on Facebook, so that it can be difficult to stand out or for people to even notice your event before the date arrives.

Tenets of Advertising Are Back

Advertising has been about getting noticed and remembered as well as having a clear call to action that appeals to your target market. Social media had a short run that could shortcut those first two requirements simply because it was on a novel platform with an attentive audience. Since social media has been mainstream for a few years now and the field crowded, the novelty is fading and getting attention online is becoming increasingly competitive.

Businesses that are not truly social will never be heard. Posting brand messages like an advertisement is not social and won’t give you the engagement you’re looking for. Getting to know the people in your community on a personal level is the only way to make the social channel work.

Unless a business can compel people to share its content because of its relevance to their lives, its importance to their friends, and the humanity of its approach, media creation will be a wasted investment.

The two principal measures of whether or not a piece of media content will be shared socially is 1. is it informative? and 2. Is it sharable? Without a yes to those two measures, your content is going nowhere.

Mature With Your Community

Businesses can buy media but they can’t buy social. There is a learning curve that social media imposes that takes time and forces a company to really consider who they are and who they serve. Get started on the learning curve and know that there is no solution that doesn’t involve you and your team using social media on a personal level.

How else can you be “social”?

Team

Jeff Roach

Jeff is our founder who is obsessed with culture change and connecting the people inside our client companies. Always learning and always teaching, lights turn on in Jeff’s mind when they turn on in others. And when that leads to growing businesses, that’s magic!

Chris London

Chris is our Sociallogical Learn leader and our Mentor of Mentors. As our first Community Manager Mentor (CMM), Chris leads the way in helping our clients and their teams understand and master the big shifts in business culture and supports our growing CMM Team.

Greg Fleet

Prior to joining the University of New Brunswick, Greg worked for over 14 years at Bell Northern Research (Nortel) in Ottawa as Senior User Experience Engineer within Design Interpretive.

Kelly Lawson

Kelly makes sure you can get a date. That’s kind of a joke but not really. Starting relationships is about being approachable, welcoming, and a potential friend. Online, that’s a communication skill and with amazing photography and personal brand expertise, Kelly is your man.

Matt Reed

Web developer / enthusiast.

Sean McGrath

Web developer and Wordpress ninja.