I finished reading Jay Oatway’s signature book: “Mastering Story, community and influence: how to use social media to become a socialeader” this week. It focuses on three topics: story, community and influence and is addressed to business leaders trying to connect in order to exploit the power of social media. The message that welcomes them is most appropiate:
We want to do business with those who make social media feel less like mass marketing and more like customer service. We seek out those whose influence has grown through caring for their community. CARING FOR THEIR COMMUNITY.
The idea is that, as social media spread, the broadcasting era heroes drifted away, DIED. Why? They simply lost the power awareness gave them. Now wannabe leaders need to give back to his/her followers and build relationships on a win-win basis.
One of my favorite examples from the book supports this argument: Oatway talks of a campaign devised by big names in Hollywood entertainment. These VIPs, deemed influencers in traditional media, wanted to raise money for a charity. Their message was: we will stop any social media activity until our followers donate x amount of money. The result: the campaign was stopped as not enough people donated and the Hollywood stars were somehow embarrassed that their popularity only took them so far. People could just as well live without their tweets as those provided no real value. I love this example as it talks volumes of topics I am really interested in: building influence and credibility by providing value for members of a community, the failure of turning popularity into influence (I do believe celebrity endorsements will only get a person to listen to someone else, the workload of getting that person to TRUST you is the real challenge).
Socialeaders in the Romanian market? I highly doubt it.
Unfortunately, I think Romanian business leaders are not yet ready to become what Oatway calls socialeaders.
Right now, they still have issues trying to figure out the ROI of social media in business terms — for example, still trying to calculate the monetary value of a follower, they are miles away from even considering entering the social media arena using their own name.
They need time to first interact with this kind of medium, then stumble upon consultants who can advocate the value of sending out tweets to industry peers or putting their name on a white paper to be distributed to his followers. Honestly, I wouldn’t even lend them this book before getting them on Linkedin or Facebook.
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