Your
boss says”Our competitors are stealing our customers using this social
media stuff. We need to use this stuff and do it better than our
competitors and we need to do it NOW!”
You are then tasked with “doing it” but you have no experience or
knowledge of what to do. So you look for help and find an outside
resource whom supposedly has the experience and knowledge to know what
to do. You bring the option of hiring this person to your boss and they
ask about the cost and what will they get from using this resource.
You tell your boss the cost but aren’t sure exactly what it is you’re
going to get. Then your boss says “I know we need to do this but I
don’t know what it is or what we’ll get from it”.
How can a company put value on something they don’t understand? How can they understand if they have no reference to “think about it”?.
What Is Required To Think?
Thinking about social media cannot increase understanding without
the appropriate knowledge. Anything new or innovative takes time to
understand and determine how to use it effectively. In order to think
effectively one must first acquire the knowledge necessary to think
about using social media strategically, tactically and with specific
purpose. Without the knowledge thinking will only produce the wrong
outcomes because your thoughts are limited to what you know, not what
you don’t know.
The reality is that learning to leverage social media requires
people and organizations to reThink everything. This thing everyone
calls social media has serious strategic implications and to just “do
it” without gaining the knowledge to think about what needs to be done
is a sure disaster.
Think About This
A business runs on communications. Without being able to effectively
and efficiently communicate you end up wasting time and money. Money
represents time and cost in rework, fixing misunderstandings, setting
the wrong customer expectations and not effectively and efficiently
communicating to your employees, customers and your market.
The cost of not thinking about these issues is increased cost.
However being able to “think” about these issues may require the
infusion of new knowledge which may not exist in your organization. W.
Edwards Deming once said “knowledge required to change the existing system to a better system must come from outside the existing system”. Why? Because the existing system is blinded by its own thinking. Get it?
Thinking About Social Media?
Who isn’t? The Corporate Executive Board said “Most companies are embracing social media—but too many are wasting their efforts through sloppy management”
More than 70% of companies are already using social media; many
are planning to increase their spending on social media across the
coming years. Whether for learning from customers, building their
brands or a range of other hoped-for outcomes, companies are clearly
diving in.
If you dive into the social media water without knowing its depth or
where the rocks are you are likely to break your neck. To avoid
breaking your neck you should first get the knowledge about that which
your about to dive into. Without knowledge people, and entire
organizations, perish. Think before you jump. But before you can think
effectively you must first get new knowledge. Social media knowledge
doesn’t come from self appointed gurus or experts who know how to get
you followers and traffic. The cost of thinking increases when you don't think. Get it?
What say you?