Any marketer worth his salt, would know that in the social media space, you need to make a lot of friends and that you wouldn't want to make a lot of people cheesed off.
But here's the rub. The player knows that he needs to keep the many happy. Meaning they're not gonna do something that'll make a lot of people upset. But what about the few that got played in a bad way? The very few who can't really effect significant bad action towards the marketer? The popular philosophy adopted by those using social media for marketing is that "Ya can't make everyone happy".
Does that mean that these very few are just collateral damage?
Well, you guessed right. This piece IS going to be a gripe. Let's face it. I do not have the social media influence of someone like Jeff Jarvis. He was unhappy with Dell, he wrote about it, his readers concurred and acted accordingly, much to the detriment of Dell. And of course, the rest is history.
But what if Jeff Jarvis wasn't such a famous blogger with a lot of followers? What if he's just someone who wrote about his unhappy experience with Dell on a blog that no one reads? Will his blog post then be considered as just a gripe and nothing else, not even worthy of attending to?
Right now, in the social media game, the ones with the most 'friends' are the targets of marketers. Even social media marketers themselves are collecting 'friends' left, right and center. These experts gain these 'friends' from the readers who read their blog posts, viewers who've watched their TV interviews, people who attended the seminars that these experts gave talks on, etc.etc.ad nauseum.
Some of these experts should read the book Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust
. If they did, they'd know that they're not supposed to collect 'friends' just for the sake of showing off that they've got a lot of 'friends', but they're supposed to build a relationship with every single one of them.Here's an example. A few months ago, I was approached for a career opportunity. The usual happened. Talked to the guy. Read about him. Checked out his Facebook page and requested to be a friend, which happily he approved. (On hindsight now, I think not much thought went into approving me as an FB friend).
Anyways, the deal fell through. Didn't think I would get the job anyway. But a couple days ago, I was approached again by this same person. And it was very clear that he didn't remember who I was, much less the fact that he actually spoke to me already. Go figure.
"So what?!" you'd say. "He's a busy guy! He can't remember everybody he's met or spoken to!"
Agreed. So does that mean I shouldn't feel slighted at all? That I shouldn't feel less special because of this snafu?
I'm just one person. Completely not memorable as the above example shows. But if I were Jeff Jarvis, a famous blogger with thousands of followers, I doubt such a thing would go unnoticed.
Social Media is touted as THE medium that allows for real conversations between marketers and their customers. But marketers are still acting as if this medium is the same as traditional mediums. "Go after the ones with the zillions of followers!" "How do we get zillions to follow us?" "Ya can't make everyone happy but don't make a lot of them unhappy"
That doesn't sound like building relationships if those not important are cast aside because they don't matter in the social media sense, i.e. do not have many followers.
What is the point of collecting so many 'friends' when you can't remember who they are. Or what they've said or done.
But is what I'm saying realistic? Honestly, should marketers acknowledge every single gripe there is out there related to their products or service, be it coming from influential social media citizens down to the nobodies like me? Is it ok to ignore the nobodies simply because they can't really do much damage to the brand/product/service?
I dunno. What I do know, is that I'm a marketer ...and I still feel hurt.
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