On Wednesday, I went to a talk by Jackie Barretta of Conway about consciousness and profitability. In her presentation she argued that the conscious awareness that is focused on businesses effects the profitability of the business. Now before you start thinking this is going in the direction of the Secret or new age movement, let me assure you that there was some very interesting perspectives she raised that when applied to social media could also fit quite well into how businesses harness the good will and conscious awareness of their operations to their success or lack thereof.
First she broke the relationships people have with business down to three different types. Society at large she equated to fans, suppliers and customers to the business as groupies and Employees as players in the business. So let’s take a closer look at that from the perspective of social media.
Fans, in this case, represent all the people who follow a person on different social networking sites. They haven’t necessarily become customers, but they find you interesting enough to follow and want to keep track of what you do, because you could provide useful information to them, or entertainment, or networking potential. However your fans really want you to get to know them. They want to learn what you can do for them, as well as how much you care about them.
Your groupies are the people who are your actual clients. And if you’re not following them, you really should be. Your groupies might also be power partners, people you refer business to and vice versa. They will promote you on a regular basis and will want the same from you. Your groupies will believe in your brand as long as you are willing to be consistent about what your brand is and what it will provide them.
And finally the player…that’d be you. The player is the person updating the social media sites, participating in the continuum of conversation and chatter that social media brings. The player engages in both marketing and more importantly customer service. You need to provide relevant information and provide helpful information/resolution to customer concerns. Businesses that ignore the market research and customer service aspects of social media have dropped the ball…and their groupies and fans will talk about it and share it with others…and that buzz can chip away at a business success, in a slow, steady fashion.
Social media, being primarily textual, is still representative of individual and group consciousness. The individual consciousness is manifested in each comment a person writes and shares with their audience, but the group consciousness is the community reaction to what is written, either in support of or against what has been written. And the ramifications of that support are felt in how that group consciousness infects and influences what people buy, what people say, and what people do.
I tend to think of social media as a textual embodiment of consciousness, with some multi-media thrown in for good effect. You can trace and track trends, share ideas, and otherwise get an idea of what the collective consciousness on social media thinks about particular subjects. It’s probably one of the easiest ways to get a handle on the thought streams of the people involved, and businesses can harness it by participating and doing their best to be proactive in how they handle both the marketing and customer support they do on social media sites.
