Top 5 Smart & Smarter Social Rules

Everyone wants to be smart. The opposite of smart is dum. No one wants to be known as dum. Yet smart and dum are transparent because of social media. What you say and do can be labeled as either smart or dum and at the click of a mouse millions will know what millions of other think about what you said or did.

The irony of social media is its transparency and each word and action is logged into the world wide library which stores everything, everyone and all things said and done. This world wide library is search-able by anyone, everyone and everybody is creating an index of content that can be found forever.

Whether an individual or a company all things social are created, curated and distributed by people individually and collectively. A company is no longer a company in the traditional sense. Rather a company is nothing more than a “tribe of people” saying and doing things for everyone to judge as smart or dum. The traditional definition of a company has been disaggregated into nodes of people sending and receiving content whether in context to an organizations objectives or not.

A “company” is no longer in context to a formal organization with incorporation papers and rules of engagement inside and out. A company is now simply tribes of people whom have an affinity to sending and receiving content that is in context to individual and collective needs.

5 Smart & Smarter Social Rules

There are really no traditional rules about all things social. Instead the “rules” are relevant to the way people think and behave under the umbrella of social engagement on-line and off. These smart and smarter rules are:

The audience reach and influence is becoming greater than the suppliers reach. This rule means that messages must be designed in context to the markets needs rather than assumptions made by suppliers. Past assumptions about engaging a market are being proved as wrong. Engagement is no longer about pushing mass media and hoping to catch a few. Engagement has become personal, relevant and meaningful. ReThink everything.
The strongest message must encompass new knowledge and innovative ways to use the knowledge to create new value. Weak messages pushing the same old same old and using tricks of the trade will make you stand out a dum. Dum may be entertaining but it doesn’t encourage lasting engagement. Smart and smarter is to ReThink what you think you know.
The social web and all its related dynamics is not a bubble that will burst. The bubble is relevant to the evaluations of companies creating networks, applications and engines to aggregate tribes of people with the aim of fueling transactions. Many won’t last and their bubble will burst. A few are doing the right things for the right reasons. Enabling people to gather in tribes, share, collaborate and create is not a business rather it is a behavioral dynamic that will never burst it will only grow bigger and bigger. ReThink your perspective.
People consume what they find valuable, meaningful and worthy of their attention. Consumption isn’t always about a product or service rather it is a process of discovery and creativity fueled by conversations. Collaborative consumption is about tribes discovering new knowledge and creating new processes, models and efficiencies to consume everything and anything and subsequently creating new markets of consumption. ReThink what and how your market wants to consume and help them to create it.
Last but not least some of the smartest things you can do may seem dum. They seem dum because what is smart is a reverse in thinking about the market. What was once considered dum crowds have turned into smart tribes. ReThink dum to discover smart and smarter approaches to the market.

Smart and smarter rules are only rules that provide new pathways to thinking. Thinking is the first step in doing anything smart.