Ask a Las Vegas cab driver, 'What's the best show in town?' He will probably reply with something like this, "Oh, Jay Leno! My wife and I just went to see him. He gives a special show for taxi drivers at two in the morning. Otherwise, we could never afford to go. Kenny Rogers does the same thing when he's in town."
You wouldn't think that anyone as big in the entertainment field as Jay Leno and Kenny Rogers needs to give away their performances, but they do. Both realize that some of the best word of mouth advertising they could have would be taxi drivers raving about their shows.
If you could do just one thing to help your customer and your business, what would that be? The short answer is to give more of what you have away.
Social networks based on the Law of Reciprocity (www.LawofReciprocity.com) is all about giving away something of value to others.
Over the years, an entire industry of consultants has arisen to help companies navigate the world of social networks, blogs and wikis. the self-proclaimed experts range from legions of wannabes to industry superstars. They produce best-selling books and dole out advice or lead workshops at companies for thousands of dollars a day.
The problem, according to a growing chorus of critics, is that many would-be guides are leading clients astray. Consultants often use buzz as their dominant currency, and success is defined more often by numbers of Twitter followers, blog mentions or YouTube hits than by traditional measures, such as return on investment (ROI).
Critics complain that many of the new experts have adopted an orthodoxy that provides little flexibility for differing situations--or outcomes. Their pronouncements follow a rigid gospel: Be transparent, engage with your customers, break down silos. Yet, these strictures don't always make business sense.
While the marketing consultants focus on buzz and engagement, their in-house colleagues are trying to use social media to change how companies operate. The goal of Enterprise 2.0, a descendant of the "knowledge management" movement in the '90s, is to reroute the information traveling through corporations, undermining rigid hierarchies. Tools from Microsoft's SharePoint, IBM's Lotus Notes, and others enable vast networks to share documents and work together on projects. A Forrester Research study shows that despite buzz around Enterprise 2.0, less than 15% of the knowledge workforce makes use of internal blogs, wikis, and other collaborative tools. "Email is still dominant," says Ted Schadler, author of the report.
Many argue that a fixaton on hard numbers could lead companies to ignore the harder-to-quantify dividends of social media (like GM did from the 1970s to 2010 with the exception of Bob Lutz's efforts to communicate within and outside the corporation), such as building trust and commitment with stakeholders.
ROI is based upon working to gain trust and commitment through managing social relationships that continuously deliver value.
Source: BLOOMBERG BUSINESSWEEK, December 14, 2009
