Business Insight Zone

Last night I drew the fun duty of speaking about social media in business to the Texas Exes Austin Professionals group. (That’s them waving for the camera.) Since I worked in the UT Alumni Center for two years in the mid-1990s, it was a particularly pleasant trip down memory lane for me to be there.

The panel I was on included:

• Eve Richter of the City of Austin;
• Kristi Kingston of the Austin American-Statesman;
• John Morgan of Whole Foods;
• and our moderator, Kim Brushaber.

After talking about how our respective organizations use social media to enhance business, we addressed a couple of major topics:

>> What advice would we give to a company considering adding social media to its marketing strategy? Answering this question, I made three main points:

1. Understand that ROI may be complex to measure. (Yes, you’ve heard this before.)
2. Understand that many social-media channels are not ideal for closing sales, but rather for opening relationships.
3. Social media often starts from marketing or P.R. teams, but it may ultimately serve your organization better in terms of:
   • customer support (on which topic this article raises interesting points)
   • training
   • internal operations & collaboration (as at IBM)
   • community relations
   • etc.

>> What predictions do we have for what will happen with social media?

• It will grow, but it will also change — probably radically. If we look back across the histories of all the modern media, we see that their early days were marked by rapid, often chaotic, change. And if we compare social media to, say, television, it’s not clear that we’ve reached the stage of Milton Berle yet, much less Johnny Carson or American Idol.

Because the discussion was rollicking along and we wanted to leave lots of time for audience questions, we didn’t get around to one of the prepared questions that I was eager to answer:

>> What suggestions do we have for audience members on how they can best use social media?

1. Find the right setting / tools / platform for you. Not every social network or tool will work for everyone. (That said, if you’re going to try Twitter, give it more than 20 minutes to make sense.)
2. Be yourself, because fakery is obvious.
3. Decide how much of yourself to share online.
   • Damning evidence endures online forever, so don’t be naive. Even if you think something is private, it might not stay private. (Eve Richter made this point in one of her answers, too.)
   • Be aware of the impact of what you share about your politics, religion, family, romantic life, and so on. Decide in advance which areas of your life you’re comfortable exposing online.
4. One of the great things I’ve experienced in social media is that it’s like a great big staircase we’re all climbing together, and in my experience the people higher up the stairs are happy to reach down and give you a hand up. You can do the same by bringing others along, offering help, and paying it forward where you can.

Thanks to Kim Brushaber and the other worthies of the Texas Exes Austin Professionals group for inviting me to speak on this topic, and for hosting such a great event. I saw old friends at the meeting, but also came away with new ones — both from the panel and the audience.