I attended a fascinating event in Foxboro, MA last week called the Inbound Marketing Summit. Hosted by a company called New Marketing Labs (http://newmarketinglabs.com/), a self-professed team of new media “evangelists” who are nimble, proficient users, this group hosts events around the country to educate business people on effective ways to use social media for profit.

Talk about content overload –70+ presenters, plus the vendor displays, plus the after hour get-togethers and the regular networking….turn on the fire hose and brace yourself….I confess, by the end I was really, really tired.

But this stuff is really exciting and it makes me pretty motivated to share. I broke it out into a few initial thoughts as I start to digest this mountain of data.
1. Here’s a venue that rewards business people who have the ability to build relationships of substance. There’s a lot of talk about” authenticity” here…the intangible, unjaded quality that indicates you are really interested in someone, that the relationship is fundamental and a positive business outcome is a bi-product of the trust that exists between us. It is the people who have this quality who should own and manage your social media efforts for your company, people who embody your brand and will present a genuinely caring face to your customer. Case in point – Paula Berg from Southwest Airlines and Jenny Cisney from Kodak have become the social media “face” for their brands – they are synonymous with a commitment to customer service that connects with their clientele on a deeply emotional level and builds a great deal of brand loyalty. You may not always feel good about a corporation, but Paula and Jenny are easy to trust because they are really nice people.
2. Building your personal brand so people trust you is worth a lot in social media. It’s really nothing new – people who trust you, listen to you. In this venue, personal recommendations and personal endorsements work the same way; however, everything here is on steroids – you can create celebrity status here and that translates to ”trusted” endorsement power connected to a potentially global audience . By creating a trusted “brand” presence you earn currency that you can use to move opinion, promote awareness, garner feedback, sell stuff; the possibilities are pretty compelling. Downside, trust takes lots of time and effort to build and is a very fragile thing to maintain (and must be done so with a great deal of vigilance). This is not a place to be entered into lightly…you definitely don’t want to be “that guy/gal” that everyone talks about for the wrong reasons. If you get a bad reputation by betraying trust, you’re screwed.
3. While the old rules are still relevant, you need to adjust them to fit the new context. A wise person once told me that nothing learned is ever wasted as long as you understand and adjust to suit the current context. Same thing with social media. Respecting people, acting with integrity, treating people well, having high standards, delivering quality – it all still applies, but now apply it to an anonymous, global audience with LOTS of opinions. This means your actions are always potentially on view – so applying these values, these tenets authentically all the time has to be who you are and how you operate naturally because someone will eventually catch you if you aren’t….
4. Traditional crisis management doesn’t work in this venue; you must have an established presence to play effectively. Dissuade yourself of the notion that you can ignore this whole thing until it goes away. It’s not going away. While social media is still young and will, no doubt, transform itself as it matures, there are too many compelling business reasons to stay out of the game If you are in business today and you want to increase your chances of viability in the future, you would be foolish not to learn about this now. If you do nothing more than listen and learn how things work, you are already ahead of your competition sitting on the sidelines. Also, if you are caught in a bad reputational slam, you can’t use this medium for instant spin. If you aren’t out there already and you try to leverage this platform for crisis control, you will come off looking foolish and you could make things even worse.
5. Trying to “game” the system? Watch out. This is a venue that requires consistent honesty. Watch yourself and stay humble, as even capable practitioners can have missteps. Case in point, Whole Foods CEO, John Mackey, a savvy proponent of social media, took a hit when it leaked he tried to drive down the stock price of his smaller rival Wild Oats by leaving unflattering pseudononymous comments on online investor forums. This is the stuff of legends and Web 2.0 is pretty unforgiving – once it’s out there it never goes away.
6. The tools really don’t matter. Social media encompasses lots of different tools, but is really more about a new cultural framework for doing business. This medium has its own social norms, driven by an internet savvy generation that is quite comfortable with online sharing and extended privacy boundaries. While many of the old rules of social etiquette still apply and playing respectfully may eventually get you invited to the party, you still need to learn how to interact productively in this new world. Like any system, it has levers and drivers that can be utilized to create influence and as with all things, it takes patience and practice to get good at it. But learning about this framework is fascinating stuff and I for one, am ready to dive in and get to know it better.

Photo by You X Ventures