Can You Explain Social Media?

How many times have you been asked “Can you explain social media to us?“  Then you have to think about how to explain the entire (r)evolution of the internet and its present state.  Try doing that and you’ll lose most people’s attention.

It has been said that “pictures speak a thousand words“. As a consultant I have always found that if you can provide a picture illustration and a simple story to explain something very complex then you have helped a client understand something they need.

Given the consistent questions we get asked we decided to try and  provide  pictures  that hopefully convey the message and help people “connect the dots“. The illustrations in this post and the following dialog are aimed at explaining why the web is critical for business success.

The Story And The Illustrations

Everyone seeks solutions to problems. Problems represent opportunities for businesses whose product or service provide solutions to problems. When people have a problem or desire to fulfill  where do 95% of them go to find the solutions? On the the web or to friends and family for advice and recommendations.

Every day of the year there are over 250 million searches done on Google.  In other words people are looking for solutions that address a multitude of issues. The greatest library of solutions is the web. If you are in the back of the library you are not likely to be found.

So when people seek solutions if they can’t find you  they are not likely going to consider you as a solution to use, whether a product or service.  If your web presence is weak (not properly built) and worse if your content is anti-social you are not likely to not only not be found but to be considered clueless if found.  Last but not least if you are not  engaging the market with relevant and relative conversations (content)  then those seeking solutions will not find your value because no one is discussing it (peer to peer).

Thus the critical path to commerce is to be found and be noted as a solution provider or an organization whose products and services people talk about.  However, in order to do so you must understand what all this social stuff is about. Using social media (the internet) effectively demands mind-sets and capabilities that are unfamiliar and sometimes even counter intuitive to previous management, marketing and advertising methods.

David Gillespie writes: If both the web & media are inherently social, & if business must have a presence online, then business must have a social element. To not have that is to fore go both logic & opportunity.

Now your challenge is figuring out the how, what, where and who you want to reach and providing them value they can use  and share with others. The consumer market has shifted from mass media to media that provides the most meaningful value. Meaningful value is relational while traditional mass media is not. For your business to survive and compete it must learn how to build relational value and use the internet to propagate that value effectively.

So What Should You Do First?

The first step for any business is to learn and apply new thinking about its relationship with the market it aims to serve, both internal and external. To learn one must have relevant and relative data that provides insights as to how well your business relates to  the market it is trying to serve.

The illustration on the left outlines critical research that must be conducted in order for your organization to gain an understanding and learn the critical skills and thinking needed to better serve your market. In other words first you must listen to understand before you try and engage with any market.

Without having the relevant data concerning how, where, who and what are your markets interest, needs and desires you cannot effectively provide a reason as to why the market should pay attention to you.

Once you have this data and insight you can then begin to learn what meaningful value you can create for the market and give them that value for free. Use free to pull the market to a higher value proposition they will pay for. Giving free knowledge that is meaningful  is considered meaningful, valuable and relational.

If the knowledge you give is in context with your markets interest then you just increased the probability of a transaction which is what you ultimately want. The difference today is how  you get what you want is by giving others what they need, when they need it and enabling them to find it at the click of a mouse or from their friends.   If they can’t find it or their friends aren’t suggesting it well then you lose.

The internet has now become the place to be found and to create value people are seeking. To not understand and use it effectively is akin to saying “I don’t care how our market behaves”.

How is that for an explanation?

Tagged as: blog marketing, brand marketing, business change, business disruption, business relations, business transformation, community currency, Conversational Currency, conversational marketing, global currency, innovation economy, jay deragon, Relationship Economy, social capital, Social Media, social media roi, social technology, Socialutions