Individual: “Alan,
what’s your Return on Investment for your social media activity? I haven’t
really experienced any benefits myself.” Alan: “How
often do you personally login to check your messages and engage real-time with
your audience? Are you personally taking time to craft
material that is interesting and helpful to them? Are you aware of their feelings and emotions? Do you take time to listen and learn about
your connections or just blast them with personal requests and sales pitches?” Individual: “Well… I don’t login every day. Sometimes a couple of days or more might
pass. And I don’t check the direct messages
anymore because if a legitimate contact really wanted to get hold of me I think
they would email or call. But if they
have connected to me doesn’t that imply they’re interested in what I’m doing?
Why shouldn’t I send them some type of personal request or call-to-action?” I’ve heard this
story enough that I could have predicted that their ROI on social media was
zero. And it will probably stay that way. Here’s
the bottom line; social media takes personal effort, you need to consistently put in the
time because there is no way to outsource your personality and original voice, or
use automation to develop empathy. I know, I
know, you “don’t have the time.” I’ve
heard that line a million times before as well.
Consider this; would you take time to secure a phone number and then
never answer when it rings, or even check the messages? Do you ignore your emails or the comments on your
blog posts? I’m guessing that you do pay
some attention to those channels. So why
assume you can ignore your social media presence and still expect audience growth
and participation? Oh, I
understand. You outsourced your
telephone to an answering machine or service so you figured you would do the
same with your social media profiles.
Yes, you can turn your social media activity over to an agency, or
independent “social media expert,” or even put your activity on automatic pilot
with social automation applications. Let
me ask you though, what’s the experience like when you’re on the other end of
those interactions? Admit it, you can always
tell when you’re communicating with automation.
If it is a person, you can immediately sense when a substitute
personality is engaging. Does that type
of exchange help build personal brand authenticity and transparency with you? I doubt it; in fact I wouldn’t be surprised if
you told me that you disconnect from those types of profiles. I know I do. ROI has long
been the gold standard of corporate buzzwords, and we marketers do tend to love
buzzwords. We also love to measure and
let our CEO and CFO know we are “data-driven.”
But that’s not something we should bet our careers on. We also operate in a social-sharing
economy. Our audiences are looking for
transparency, relevance and authentic engagement. That means we have to get serious about direct
human interaction and building trust-based relationships. As a result I believe the development of empathy
has become more important than ever. We
need to become aware of and sensitive to the feelings, thoughts and experiences
of others. I know it sounds obvious, but
it’s more difficult than you realize. |
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