I appreciate what Qualman has to say about the reality of people relying upon personal recommendations rather than advertising. I am not sure that is a new or revolutionary issue. for example, people have their "circles of trust". The very inner circle are the people closest to you, an intermediate circle might be people that share similar goals, backgrounds, or social standing. What Qualman and other social media experts have hit on is that it has become easier for a person to draw upon recommendations from their inner and intermediate circles and that geography or other physical parameters might not be separations any more. For example I remember that in my hometown you were either from a Ford family or a Chevy/GM family, and very few Dodge families existed. This was not because of any true linkage to the manufacturers but because at some point someone in your family had a great experience with one or a bad experience with the other, and thus the trend was established. This was significantly before social media and did have spillover effects to those people who were "townies" and close friends of one or the other camp. Today we see the same phenomenon amplified with social media. People get the opportunity to be exposed to new music because a friend on the East coast likes a local/regional band and as a result that band's songs are downloaded on the West Coast. I was exposed to Lou Malnati's Chicago pizza because a friend liked it and I was therefore able to find their website and order some frozen pizzas to be shipped to me.
I see a possible conflict in two of Qualman's points about the behavior online and the Next Steps (Chapter 8). In chapter 8, Qualman talks about transparency in the job-hunt process. Certainly there is transparency of the company or job for the applicant, but based on chapter 2, there might not be a lot of transparency of the applicant for the company. While the search and find capability is better, companies will still be faced with the dilemna of possibly hiring a person that interviews really well, to find that they have engaged in "preventative" online behavior. So the overall outcome is not substantially influenced by social media, or possibly is too inluenced by social media. The "too influenced" outcome is one in which a company rejects a candidate based on photos from social events that might depict an unrepresentative amount of drinking or lack of seriousness of a person that might actually be ideally suited for the job.
On the subject of the preventative behavior, especially for companies, I have this thought: the company cannot control what people say about it in the social media age, any more than a person can control the comments they get and whether other "friends" misinterpret those comments. One must be judicious about what actions or message originates with themselves or the company, because that is the only behavioral evidence to the contrary. Which ties in nicely with the concept of the braggadocian behavior - if you are going to brag, make sure it is about something that can be backed up with facts or examples. A company doesn't want to tout their environmental record or commitment if they are engaged in policies that leave a pipeline susceptible to rupture leading to an environmental disaster. The word of mouth on that situation would be both the negative fallout of the disaster and the negative fallout about trust and integrity.
I know my view is a little jaded. I have recently experienced a whole group of people completed disconnected from social media and most internet, and while that is becoming more and more rare, the social media revolution has not yet completely overwhelmed all traditional forms of marketing, communications, or outreach.
No comments:
Post a Comment