In these days of over-hyped social media, where everyone is grasping to digital as the next new goldmine, and everybody is a social media consultant or expert or whatever. There’s often two words that comes to mind: SLOW DOWN. Seriously. Slow down.
I could write some buzzline here saying “it’s not about me it’s about we” here, but I wont. It seems like we’re constantly searching for the next piece of content, our 5 seconds of fame on twitter.
The golden link that other people can’t resist, so they’ll retweet it and you get more twitter fame, for a split second – and then they are on to the next link, or next conversation. One thing I see is missing is the art of acknowledging that people don’t care about your product, people don’t care about your brand.
BBut the trick is, to take them from ignoring you, to turning you into the lovemark of the century in their minds. They should love you! but do you really love them back ?
Return on involvement has become quite a iconic book in danish business circles over the last 2 1/2 years, but as where people they get the part where they’re supposed to be on facebook and gain likes from their community, they are not really giving anything back to the people who helped them with gaining a bit of that 5 seconds momentum by supplying that inspiration. Something like dropping a comment on a pin on pinterest. or writing a comment on a blog. In my business world I always call that proactivity, and I say that if you want to build a brand you need to at least do 2/3’s proactivity OUT THERE – instead of hanging on to your facebook page and twitter account and posting links there like crazy.
You need to be in the interactions. The interactions are everything. Mihaly chechekmihaly (I don’t even want to look up his name because everybody spells it wrong) got it totally right when he said that creativity lies in the interaction between people – given the circumstances of the world around them.
It’s not you who decides whether or not you are seen creative, it depends on the community. It depends on Return on Involvement.
The same with trust and branding. It’s not you who decides if people trust you or love you or like you. It’s the community. And a lot don’t give anything back unless it’s on your own playing field. Well, guess what. As I preach and write in Return on Involvement. The involvement you want so bad?
The buzzword of the decade that you’re dying to implement: Return on Involvement – needs to come from yourself.
It’s not about dumping links in LinkedIn groups. It’s about building trust by interacting with people where they are, and normally they are not on your Twitter stream or your Facebook page. Slow down! get the eagle eye going. Spot the places of interacting with the community (normally the interaction part, takes part in the comment field – even if you’re just repining their pin on Pinterest – you can write a comment)… Every social media out there- has a “call for interaction” and that rockers, is where the battlefield is. Not your Facebook page. Very zen right? Slow down. please =) aum.
