The terrible truth about social media…
…or perhaps the great truth about social media and it's easy!
The ability of social media to influence (or perhaps manipulate) people’s opinions is unparalleled. Influencing their opinion about your company, influencing their opinion about you, influencing their opinion about how they should behave or what decision they should take. It can do this individually (making sure that you want to connect to me and listen to what I say) or at scale (like voting-in Donald Trump or achieving a vote for Brexit).
The important thing to remember is that it doesn’t matter whether you love or hate Trump or Brexit or any other decision partly (or wholly) influenced by social media and it certainly doesn’t matter whether you love or hate the ability of social media to influence these outcomes, what matters is that social media DOES influence them and you (as an individual or as a company) need to recognise this and get onboard with it.
This is the reality of the situation whether you (or we) like it or not.
Businesses that fail to acknowledge this are leaving the game wide open for their competitors and individuals are too - whether that’s your deals or your pending promotion or perhaps your new job - everyone that we want to think well of us can be (and probably is) influenced by what they see on social media.
And yet…despite knowing this we usually do little about it.
We know that LinkedIn is crucial in getting people to take us seriously yet we don’t create a compelling personal brand to do just this. We know that being active on Twitter increases out chance of being picked-up by influencer lists and news channels yet we don’t tweet as often as we should. We know that posting on LinkedIn gives us visibility in front of an audience of 575,000,000 yet we still make one to one cold calls/emails or go to a business breakfasts in the vain hope that this one will be the one that maters, the one that makes a difference.
Take it from me, it won’t be.
So, consider what you want people to think about you and your company and then simply create a presence that makes this the obvious conclusion for them to arrive at.
Honestly, it is no more difficult than that!
22 Years of Experience as an Entrepreneur, Mentor, Founder, Coach, Consultant, Trainer. Ridiculously good-looking for brief periods of time. Available to take on additional Non-Executive Director & Advisory Board roles
6 年We are all influenced in some way by social media - it's how you leverage it for your business that is important!?
Should have Played Quidditch for England
6 年If your not social, your leaving money on the table!