The Social Organization

A Plea to Professional Communicators - Don't Be Microphones

 Social media - as a business conversation - has been around now for a number of years. It's not new anymore, at least conceptually.  There are still a lot of operational details to figure out in terms of how it integrates with an organization's current processes, structures, and resources but unless you've been under a rock, you've been hearing a lot about it for a while. You may be tired of it.

If you are a professional communications person and by that I mean you are in a role explicitly responsible for ensuring communications happens (that could mean you are in PR, marketing, customer support, project management, executive management, HR, etc.) you would be crazy by now not to be at least experimenting and educating yourself on how social tools and methods are changing the fundamentals of your job.

One issue that I've noticed that is a risk if you are a communications professional, is these new 'social' methods will expose your communication style pretty quickly and, frankly, for many that communication style is not particularly effective. It may be time to take a good hard look at how well you communicate in general (forget Twitter, etc).

Let me explain.  Over the last few years I have interacted with a large range of communications professionals who are exploring this new social landscape (kudos to them). However, many immediately expose the fact that they could care less about who they are speaking with because they are on a mission to educate themselves and then figure out how to get their message out. While their focus may be admirable their efficacy in making an impact is very low.  They use others for their own needs without offering anything in exchange. I've personally had a few experiences of spending hours of my time with groups and not even receiving the most basic 'thank you' in return. This leaves me feeling used and thinking they are extremely rude and don't understand the basics of good conversation - i.e. asking the other person questions, giving others recognition and thanks in exchange for something they need. The sources of these poor communication skills have been downright shocking to me.  For those of you who know me, you know I love a good conversation, I love to help people, and I love seeing new technology so I'll talk to just about anyone but I don't really love being talked at or spending a lot of time only to feel like it went unrecognized. And it's a pretty good way of ensuring I won't come back to the table later.

The other interesting thing that I've noticed about many people who are professed 'communicators' is that they have very little ability to pick up on others' cues whether that consists of arm crossing, staring at the ceiling, or shifting their body weight in physical interactions or their completely dead silence from the other end of the phone, IM chat, or Twitter conversation. It is actually fascinating to me because part of the hallmark of a great communicator is an intuitive understanding of the reaction they are getting and the ability to adjust their own technique to that. This is admittedly a hard skill to learn in a classroom and it requires a level of self-awareness that takes time to attain but it is absolutely critical if you want to be an effective communicator.  The irony is that for the last few decades, communications degrees can be earned without really being a good communicator, leaving people looking like great communications professionals on paper who don't have the skills necessary to be effective.

So here is my plea. Please consider the following when trying to influence someone:

• If you ask for someone's time or attention, say thank you.
• Before you start speaking about what you do, ask others what they are interested in.
• Tailor your conversation to the other person's interests.
• Pause occasionally to check in and get reaction... if they don't have much, they are likely not that engaged... so ask again what they find most interesting about the topic and adjust.
• Ask the other person about their business/goals.
• Don't ask for more than is reasonable to get for free. If you use someone's deep expertise, pay them for it either in exposure, money, or referrals.

And yes, some of these lessons we should have learned in kindergarten.  Thanking people takes time. Build that in to your schedule. And yes - all of us occasionally get pressed for time, forget, etc. There have been times that I forget my manners too so we are all responsible for giving each other the occasional hall pass but generally, try to care about the people you ask to do something and try to give something back to them in exchange. While it's the right thing to do... it's also the only way to really be influential.

The Social Marketing & Sales Funnel

Social marketing does some interesting things to what we traditionally think of as the marketing funnel. You know - the one where we generate a lot of content and events, then keep pushing more content in front of people until we finally sic sales people on the lead.  It has led to some fairly dysfunctional behavior - both inside organizations and with leads.  A game of cat and mouse ensues until someone gives up. Exhausting. And expensive.

But it doesn't have to be that way. Content and social marketing has given us another option - one which, frankly, I'm pretty relieved to see. In this scenario we also produce a lot of content but in more formats, often in smaller pieces (although not exclusively), and we do it much more frequently. The majority of that content gets openly published for all to see.  Prospective customers can lurk and lurk without being noticed - and engage in the way and amount they want, when they are ready. It doesn't mean we abandon email marketing and other things but the focus is on pushing content out that provides some value vs. banging on the 'buy now' drum.

This creates a pretty dramatic change to the width and the length of the marketing and sales funnel:

1. All the world's a stage. Leads are everywhere but they may be close to impossible to track.
2. Not tracking unqualified leads is a good thing: It is expensive and there is such a high percentage of them that are not interested or ready to become customers that companies typically waste a lot of time, energy, and money trying to convert them. 
3. Without tracking early leads, the marketing organization has to wait for leads to emerge and declare themselves. This will drive them crazy... but reduce overall costs. It requires a very different mindset and over time the amount of content vs. leads will be relatively consistent but... it requires giving up control of knowing exactly who will emerge and when.
4. Because you are giving leads more control over when and how they engage, the effectiveness of each conversation is higher because they are ready and interested - i.e. the holy grail - they are engaged.
5. Because in many cases (this is not true of all products) prospects can get the majority of what they need to make a purchasing decision without a conversation, when they do reveal themselves time to close can happen extremely quickly.
6. A much higher percentage of leads that contact you proactively are ready to buy. This clarity is refreshing and efficient. And wonderfully cost effective.
7. You don't end up convincing someone they need your product only to find out after the sale that it doesn't really work for them or they aren't ready for it and therefore they don't use it - both of which cause them to be unhappy and difficult, which is expensive for the company and potentially damaging in the long run if they choose to share their feelings publicly.

By letting your content be free you can increase the width of your lead funnel but you may not be able to know by how much and you can dramatically shorten the funnel.  And, yes, it may take leads a little longer in the beginning but when they are ready, they are ready and you'll end up with much more constructive work to do - with customers that really appreciate what you have to offer.

Ahh - feels like a cold glass of spring water.

Keeping Social Initiatives Simple

Part of the reason social media and software has taken off is its simplicity.  Twitter was about the simplest conversation interface possible. People contact organizations on their blogs, Facebook Pages, and Twitter because the existing mechanisms are too complex and have been so over-engineered that they are no longer humane (i.e. 'dial 5 for account information').  This has led me to worry about social methods becoming too BPMized (business process management) - because if it does, it likely becomes no better than the broken process it replaced. I've often asked people to think about why @ComcastCares is so popular (I am a big fan BTW). It's because, in general, existing support channels at Comcast are so bad.  If existing support procedures worked well for customers, they would not need to seek out support on Twitter.  All of us working in the 'social' space need to guard against over-complication for this reason.

Given that thinking, a recent blog post by Clay Shirky The Collapse of Complex Business Models really hit me hard. We are driven to increasing complexity yet that is the very thing that gets in the way of the value over time.  I've noticed this with both blogging and Twitter - they were both very, very simple when I started. Over time they have gotten very complex with plug-ins, application ecosystems, feeds, aggregation points, etc.  They are far more intimidating to use for people starting out today then they were when I started.  In the intervening time I've seen things like the large decline in teen blogging. Is it just that they have different tools like Facebook to use or has the complexity of blogging outstripped their interest and ability?

For those of us investigating the use of social technologies and techniques in a business context, it is worth giving a lot of thought to complexity. Simplicity is what is attractive and increases participation but our organizational cultures and structures often pull us toward complexity so that our efforts mesh better with existing processes. We often add complexity at our peril.