Be Real

Whether your company is large or small, whether your audiences are far-flung or local, being earliest to the sale depends upon your investment in your communities.

Social media can aptly be described as many communities of many humans. And like any group of humans, certain attitudes and behaviors will gain you acceptance, and some will get you ostracized. Being smart socially, will differentiate the effective communicators from the rest on social media.

Studies suggest there are three basic requirements when communicating online or otherwise:

1) Authenticity

2) Transparency

3) Emotional Intelligence

Authenticity is just being who you say you are and staying consistent. It’s all about strengthening your brand by the lasting memory you create and the promise you deliver.

Transparency is full disclosure. There is no reason to fool your audiences online. It won’t work; they’ll smell trickery a mile away.

Emotional intelligence (or EQ) has always been the secret ingredient in “how to win friends and influence people.” It’s just as important in social media, where your brand personality is open to the scrutiny of hundreds or thousands or millions of viewers. EQ is your self-awareness plus social awareness.

In his book, “A Whole New Mind”, Daniel H. Pink discusses the correlation between “right-brained thinking” and EQ, and postulates that having a high EQ is the primary differentiator for companies facing off-shore competition. “We must think and master aptitudes that are high concept and high touch,” he writes, “that overseas knowledge workers can’t do cheaper …” Not only does our emotional intelligence determine our acceptance into communities, but it may be the difference between survival and extinction of our companies.

To understand the concept of self-aware versus socially aware, imagine your company as one of the characters from “The Wizard of Oz”. Which one should it be?

• Scarecrow – is socially aware but not self-aware. He’s a strawman, a fringe character. He’s close to the action but not paying much attention to what his use of social media might reveal about him. As a result, he is an extreme “life streamer” – posting too often about too little. “Crows are evil!” for example, or “Bored with my field.” If he only had a brain!

• Cowardly Lion – he’s very self-aware and very much interested in his own self-interest but is not socially aware. He doesn’t understand the value of the “social” in social media. He's so deep in his fear and afraid of his own shadow, he can't focus on anything else around him.

• Tinman – let’s say the Tinman is not self-aware or socially aware. (Sorry, Tinman, you’re the bad guy in this analogy.) He just doesn’t get what makes himself, or other people, tick. So he gets a little oiled up and starts chopping randomly in social settings – potentially inflicting great harm to the company’s image.

• Wizard of Oz – the great and powerful Oz gets it! He knows you can’t get on social media without a strategy. He knows how to listen, participate, and engage in a way that fully respects the laws of human behavior. The Wizard, front and center of all the action, makes an excellent community manager – and proves that the company is transparent by coming out from behind the curtain in the end.

So the question is... which one are you?