The 6 Laws of Communication Critical to Social Media Strategy
Has anyone else heard this from management the past couple of weeks? “Now that Twitter has jumped the shark, what technology should we move our social media resources towards?”
On one hand, this is great because it shows forward thinking…however, we know that it doesn’t really matter what technology is next. Chasing technology doesn’t meet business objectives, better communication through Social Media does.
Social Media Technologies are another set of solutions to strategic business problems. But, if you don’t fully understand the problem you won’t apply the right solution. When evaluating Social Media strategies and business objectives, I evaluate them based on these 6 Laws of Communication.
I covered these as part of my presentation to the Chicago Chapter of the Scleroderma Foundation, a non-profit looking for guidance on how to get started in Social Media. Recently I’ve found a renewed need for these and thought they’d benefit from further explanation and discussion.
In this post, I’ll cover the first three and follow it up on Thursday with 3 more. Here’s the list
The 6 Laws of Communication Critical to Social Media Strategy
1 – Open and transparent communication is best
2 – Two way conversation
3 – Listening is more important than talking
4 – Everyone has a different style of communication
5 – Adding more people to the conversation requires more organization
6 – The message is impacted by the method
1 – Open and transparent communication is best
- In the Real World
- As Social Media Strategists, we can all relate to a story about “hidden agendas”. Have you ever googled for a way to find out who was BCC’d on an email? Or had the sense in a meeting that someone wasn’t giving you the full story? Yeah…it feels crappy.
- Social Media Strategy Implication
- The Open and Transparency principle is fundamental. It’s tempting to hire bloggers to write about your products like Wal*Mart or to sell your soul on twitter by paying people to tweet for you like Apple, Cisco, Stub Hub, Fat Cow, Skype…. But the risk is not worth the reward.
- Bloggers make their living finding examples of companies doing this and you will lose tons of credibility.
2 – Two way conversation
- In the Real World
- We can all quickly name the one friend that we have that talks about himself without listening to anyone else. In the “real world”, you handle these types of people by just ignoring them.
- Also, we all have friends that we absolutely love to engage in conversations. These people build on your thoughts and offer you great nuggets to expand your thoughts upon.
- Social Media Strategy Implication
- We can also all quickly name the companies that both talk and listen. For me, it’s Best Buy. I am surrounded by Best Buy ads on the TV, the Web, and in my Mailbox.
- However, when I go into the store, it becomes a conversation between me and the associates who help steer me to a video game or TV show based on my likes and interests.
3 - Listening is more important than talking
- In the Real World
- Nearly every introductory manager training course talks about active listening, or the ability to extract insights from communication in real-time. Great leaders know that talking effectively comes from listening to your employees.
- On the other hand, bad leaders talk about themselves the whole time which causes their employees to ignore them.
- Social Media Strategy Implication
- Think about what happens when your consumers choose to ignore your Social Media efforts because you are talking about yourself the whole time. Sure, they may not visibly complain, but they will not invite you to discussions they are having.
- The inability to listen obviously prevents you from learning today. But more importantly, the inability to listen will prevent you from being invited to conversations in the future.
Posted By Ben Foster
-
Chris Brooks
