Hi. I'm here to help you be more human. Yes, technology will be involved.

As marketer, one could think my time with clients is mainly spent developing lofty strategies and clever programs to garner gobs of market share and WOM. Oh, but if only that were the case.

Along with all the high-level strategizing, I clock plenty of time knee-deep in the trenches when training companies on the ways, whims, practices and protocols of social media.  You see, social media is a funny thing. Why? Because due to tremendous cost efficiencies and tremendously easy publishing tools, social media is the easiest medium to enter, but it's the hardest one to truly understand.

As specialists, when it comes to the wonders of Web 2.0… blogs and wikis and twitter, oh my!... we need to be mindful of making the technology “tangible” for our clients, otherwise it’s too techie and they tune out. And we also need to espouse best practices to ensure lots of signal and much less noise for audiences (trust me, it’s getting really noisy in here).

But chief among all these points is this: To succeed in social media, one must get past thinking “technology” and, instead, think “humans.”

In fact I often say, "I’m not really here to teach you about technology but how your brand can be more human--it's just that technology facilitates the process." That one usually gets a few chuckles. But it’s true. Especially since I’m throwing around terms--like “blogs”, "microblogs," “wikis”, “widgets” and “podcasts"--that sound far less human and, um, much more alien.

Amid all these new-fangled tools and other-worldly features, I explain we need to remember that *people* are on the other side of those comments, and naturally want to be treated as such. And I clarify that while the press and industry are busy talking up the tech advancements, the true story of social media is not the technology. Nope. The real story is that, given these tools, people are actively using them to swap their ideas, feedback, preferences, passions, stories, likes and, yes, dislikes. And the reason they’re doing so is simply because they’re finding other humans with which to connect.

Thus, if a company wants to connect with people, they need to be human, too. Otherwise, just like a lifeless ad, you’re going to be ignored (or worse, mocked).

Now, telling a company “You need to be more human in your communications and interactions!” can sound pretty darn silly. Indeed, it gets me some peculiar looks. But when I explain the many reasons why companies are grappling with finding their social voice and floundering in speaking with customers online, it starts to make a lot of sense. (And the looks I get become less peculiar.) Because years of habits and hurdles have to be overcome, like:

• Ivory towers keep marketers locked safely away. As a rule, marketers are cut-off from their customers. It’s not intentional, it’s just that most professionals work in their offices, not "in their markets." And while industry reports and customer intelligence data are enlightening, it's nowhere near the same as actually interfacing with customers. This is precisely why social media is so beneficial since it enables you to be actively involved with your market on a daily basis, without ever leaving your tower.
• Losing control is chaotic. Moving from decades of perfectly scripted messages to an era where the customer can run with--or run roughshod over!--your brand is, admittedly, quite daunting. But take heart, as all companies are facing this challenge. So leap we must from control to chaos. And where everyone is fearful of the free-for-all, it is within the free-form nature of communities and conversations where feedback leading to improvements, even ideas for new products, are uncovered. Yup, there are gems aplenty just waiting to be mined.
• Moving from ‘The’ to ‘Me’ is tough stuff (at first). When companies have spoken with their markets, up until now it's been in broadcasts from “the” brand, not communications in the “me” voice. And hence, It can be difficult at first to find one’s footing and personal voice...but once companies do, they find it refreshingly natural. Remember, it's hard to like a machine; but it's easy to love a person.
• People don’t speak in buzzwords, but marketers sure do. Learning how customers actually speak can be a big learning curve. Folks, we have become so comfortable within our buzzword bubbles (guilty as charged!), we lose sight of how silly we often sound. I've said it many times over, but this is truly one of the most redeeming and enlightening attributes in monitoring online conversations. Because we no longer need to guess or assume how our markets speak, we see how they speak every day. In fact, we have a record of it (and that record is called the Social Web).
• Marketers are used to campaigns that start and end. Not conversations that keep going… and going. We professionals produce annual plans with budgets that are usually split into quarters and campaigns. But campaigns have finite start and end dates; where social media does not. Once companies establish a social media presence they’re in it for the long-haul. So instead of one discussion, it's a series of ongoing conversations.
• The path to Web 2.0 cuts straight through the department labeled “Legal!” While it may seem like it, the legal department is not really trying to take the wind out from our social media sails. They’re important to a company as they work to prevent and eliminate risk. From the lawyers' vantage point, social media is one big ol’ bucket of risky buzz, and for good reason! So marketers need to work with their legal departments to create guidelines and clearly establish what all can be covered on their blogs and in online conversations (a lot of which, I assure you, is common sense). There are now many companies involved in social media so lawyers are better understanding how to work with this new medium--it's just that legal language is very rigid and about as far from "human speak" as humanly possible.

To be sure, in humanizing brands there are many components for companies to plan and assess–-like who (or whom) will be the brand’s spokesperson(s), how their personalities will complement that of the brand’s established personality, what content in particular will be valuable to audiences, what specific programs will have the highest impact, which messages are key to communicate… and how to integrate those specific messages without sounding like a walking billboard in online conversations.

Yet it’s funny just how much falls into place when companies accept and practice the very basic human premise of these human media.

So keep nudging your clients into these uncharted social waters. Just remember that there's a lot of new for them to learn, and just as much old to un-learn.

(And be empathetic with them in their transitions--they’re only human, after all.)

Social Media Tips • Social Media *Extras* • Social Media Training • Contact CK

Comments

[Gopal Shenoy]

Outstanding article.

Organizations have not yet come to the realization that to make social media work, they first have to make sure that their organization is set up to do the listening, deal with the truth (not what the marketing engine has been spewing out for years - the gobbledygook that no one understood) and then worrying about whether to use Twitter, Facebook etc. They also do not realize that the conversations are taking place out there whether the company wants it or not.

It still amazes me as to how marketers give me this weird look when I ask them if they have met their customers in their own environment or if they have picked up the phone and talked to one - and talking to them at tradeshows does not count. Why is it so hard to get?

[Alan Wolk]

Yes, yes and yes. This nicely lays out all the changes companies need to deal with as they move into the social web.

And truth is, they don't really have a choice: the world is moving there, along with their customers, whether they like it or not.

"Ivory Towers" notion very well put-- marketers used to get out there with customers a lot more, that one-to-one interaction has been lost in favor of focus groups, surveys and other specious activities.