I was reading through my weekly intake of Jason Falls at Social Media Explorer and came across a post with a reference from the Cluetrain Manifesto. First off, I love the book. I read it when it came out a couple of years ago and still keep it around my desk. In his post, Jason makes reference to Cluetrain point fingers at the marketing industry asking them, “Where is the consideration of the people?”
From Cluetrain:
Conversations among human beings sound human. They are conducted in a human voice.
I agree with Jason when he says that the Cluetrain Manifesto basically introduced the concept of social media to Corporate America. It is also extremely important for small business owners to understand the concept of listening and starting conversations.
Social Media has a wide array of people. Some people need your product or service.. other people would rather not listen to your hard sell speech about blah. blah. blah. It is about the conversation.. the personality.. and the person on the other end, not you.
I would encourage you to read Jason’s post because it has some awesome points for all matter of people using social media as a strategy for growth. I want to focus on the concept of using a human voice while in the depths of social media. Whether you are using Twitter, Facebook, or Plaxo (etc) it is important to listen first and speak second.
How long is it going to take us to learn that the CONSUMER is now in control of the conversation? It is no longer about quantity. It is no longer about how many direct mail pieces you can send out or how many banner ads you can buy.
It is about the them not about you. Use Twitter and Facebook as a tool to speak as you would your best-friend at a barbeque (okay bad example but you get the drift). We are all in the same rat-race here. Trying to help each other succeed in the cut throat world of small business marketing.
Talk about what YOU do not the industry or the sale of the day. How do you help people? How do you creat relationships with your clients? That is what people what to hear. They are to be inspired.
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I agree – but find it really kind of sad we have to encourage people to talk to others as humans and encourage people to help others.
Kyle, good post!
I think most social media “people” and blog readers all agree that consumers control the conversation.
But how do we persuade big companies that this is so? And even that they should embrace this fact?
From my perspective, the big companies I deal with work with return on investment measured by numbers.
Since we cannot measure the value of conversation, like we measure readers of a magazine or TV viewers, then it becomes so much harder to make the “sell” to show them on a graph whats in it for them.
And to find ROI on social media which can be explained to a 5-year old (or even a big business exec.) – that is interesting.
Kyle, thanks for reminding everyone about The Cluetrain Manifesto. Can you believe it’s now ten years old?
Cluelessness is the single biggest problem gripping the corporate world. I wrote about this last year on my personal blog:
http://www.robbyslaughter.com/blog/?2008-07-08
@robbyslaughter