You Want Results?

A manager tells the workers “People, we need results from all this social stuff,not excuses. This business operates on cash flow, profits and capital. Unless you produce the results the business can’t operate. Now go get the results from social media we need”.

Maybe you haven’t heard it in those specific words but you’ve heard it proclaimed in most every business you’ve been employed by.  Every business needs results but what most businesses don’t realize is what produces the results.  Telling people to get results doesn’t produce results. Talking about the need for results doesn’t produce results. Pushing people to create results will create false results because people feel the pressure of giving you results.  Pressured for results people will take the short road and produce the result but the result doesn’t last.

What Results Do You Want?

Individuals and businesses expect to get results from social media. Results are typically defined as a sale. However for some marketers the first result they seek is an audience. Get a “false audience” on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin or any social network isn’t difficult.  What you get from a false audience is not results rather it is nothing more than numbers.

Gaining sales from any business is about building, sharing and sustaining value. Value in the forms of products or services and value in the form of relationships.  Selling products and services is about selling value that fills a need at a price that reflects the value delivered.

Relationships are built on providing value in a relationship and the equity of the relationship built reflects the price of the capital required to establish and maintain the relationship. Relationship equity equates to trust because your actions, deeds, products and services that create value both expected and unexpected.  Expected value is the foundation of the relationship. Unexpected value is the pillars that build stronger relationships.

The Results Of Social Media

Everyone seems to be looking for the secrets to gaining results from and with social media. Social Media results  are conversational. When people and brands “push” their message with the aim of trapping people the result is mostly a rejection. When people push out pornography or scams and schemes aimed at tricking an audience the result  is “unfollow“.

The results of social media rest in the hearts and minds of people who have rejected mass media and are now rejecting anti-social media.  So to answer the question as to “are there results from social media” the answer is yes.  The results are the results of human interaction aimed at sharing, learning and helping others.  These results  have been and will always be what drives the hearts and minds of decent people.

If people, brands and institutions want to maximize the results of social media then they first must understand human vs. institutional value drivers.

You want results? Then simply do the right things and do them right. By the way that requires you to think in human terms rather than marketing and advertising terms.  Our thinking is influenced by 40, 30, 20, ten or less years of producing the same old result. You can’t force conversational currency all you can do is nurture it. A change in thinking is first required before you can change a result. That may take some time.

Get it?  Watch the presentation below

What Say You?

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Tagged as: blog marketing, business change, business disruption, business relations, business solutions, business transformation, Conversational Currency, conversational marketing, innovation economy, jay deragon, Relationship Economy, social capital, social commerce, Social Media, social media roi