Social Machinery

More than 70 years back Dale Carnegie wrote an amazing  book on how to influence people and build friendships. Incredibly,  his way of looking the world is a fundamental piece of what today we called Social media. 

For any company or brand trying to enter the Social media space for engaging with their customers  is key to understand the paradigm shift that is happening  in terms of communication. Today the online world is about conversations; your brand needs to participate in thousands of small conversations  in the vast web 2.0 space.

This is a fundamental change compared to the last 50 years, where traditional media like Television, radio and newspaper used to broadcast messages to millions of people doesn’t matter if you like or not. It was one way communication.

In today’s online world that way of working is obsolete; nobody wants to passively absorb broadcast messages coming from any brand. In fact, according to Nielsen Company only 14% of people believe in advertisers messages. In the other hand 78% of people prefer other people recommendation when buying or choosing products.

In that sense, some of Dale Carnegie’s rules for pleasing others could be a good starting point for any brand entering the social media space:

1. Become sincerely interested in other people. Take an honest interest in them and what they are doing. Don’t just pretend you’re interested, people will notice. Everybody has something interesting about them. Find out what it is.
2. Don’t criticize or condemn. Try to find the positive side of things. Is always easy to find disagreements, but what really add value in a relationship is when you find areas of collaboration.
3. Give honest, authentic appreciation. In social media specially, you need to be sincere. Express your view points with humbleness and honesty even if you think different.
4. Smile. What is important is to share a positive spirit with others. Find things to smile about it and share it with the world.
5. Remember that the most important word for someone is their name. Is the sweetest and most important sound we can hear or read. Social media is about personalization, is changing the way companies talk to their consumers, and is about having fans not customers. You need to get personal.
6. Be a good listener. First listen to people and what they are saying about you in the social media space. What they want, what they are expecting from your products and services. Again, hearing is different to listening. Is the same difference between eating and digesting. For listening you need to have sincere interest on what other people is saying.
7. Find some common ground. Talk about what other may found interesting. Social media is not about your brand, is about them. Is about people and not hard-selling. Imagine Social Media as a party, where in order to create new friends you need to find things in common that you can share. Don’t only bore people with things that are interesting to you. You don’t have to fake interest, find real common ground.
8. Make the other person feel important – and do it sincerely. The only true way to make somebody feel important is for you to feel they really are important to you. If they are your customers and you are spending time with them, they should be important.