Whether we're aware of it or not throughout our lives we all join or start a community of like minded people, it's what makes us the social animals we are.

What do I mean by communities?

I'm not going to get to philosophical about it but from the day we are born, right through to the final days of our passing we align ourselves to families, friends, and work colleagues, sometime consciously, sometimes unwittingly. For the latter we very quickly 'cull' those communities as our mutual 'alignment' gets out of step - It's called growing as people.

So, why is it that brands and companies who think they are on 'social' use it to simply carry over the intrusive 'advertise and promote' thinking that's turning us off on every other aspect of our lives. Social is just that, it's about being social, and not everyone is going to 'get you'.

When you think about joining in communities, engaging with those communities, or creating your own instead of interrupting me with your intrusive ads, guess what?

Like minded people will be drawn to you, you will learn more about yourself, hopefully grow, and build out a loyal tribe of supportive advocates.

I never understand why it is we arrive at the place of work and forget that everything, and I mean everything we do is underpinned by our ability to be social. 

Change your thinking, become socially aware first, not selling aware first.

Example: If you were sat in a bar, or coffee shop after you had a meeting with a potential new client (go with me) and they entered said bar/coffee shop with members of their team, and started to talk about you and your company, what would you be wanting them to say?

In summary that's what personal and company branding is all about, so if your not listening, and engaging how do you know if your 'on brand' or not and using social media correctly is a valuable way to help shape those conversations about you and your company.

Due to the global impact of 'Covid-19' we're seeing daily turmoil and frantic scaremongering headlines, which in turn is creating anxieties and leading people to get involved with 'tribe's and communities on social media they feel can provide them with facts from things they have 'experienced' around the crisis. 

We're also being told that were heading for a potential recession and the advertising industry is just one sector that's in panic. Companies whose revenues have been decimated by lack of revenues are being fiscally tighter. Consumers are doing something similar and in fear of losing jobs, as a result they're postponing discretionary spend of any kind - it's all filtering through to the worldwide economic infrastructure we once thought was impenetrable.

I bang on about how companies have simply transferred their 'advertise and promote' 20th Century legacy thinking into social networks have managed to piss us all off. Brands do this because media buying agencies salivate at the access they can gain to the 3.8 Billion people who are on them, and its wrong.

This crisis is making all of us rethink what was and got us all looking for ways to maintain a front of mind presence when we can no longer afford to feed the fraud ridden programmatic shit machine of digital advertising.

How about stopping the spammy intrusive stuff that none of us really pay any attention to?

To do this requires you to create an internal, and external socially inclusive strategy. 

This should also include employee advocacy at every level, starting at the top down and if done right just like 'Covid-19' can produce its own 'butterfly effect'. 

If you combine this with consumer advocacy which actively encourages discussion and engagement you start to build authentic relationships.

To do this right also requires you to have the right skills based training, and of course the right 'listening tools'. 

Employee advocacy is not about regurgitating the corporate bible, its about leveraging the knowledge, experience, and expertise of your employees to communicate in an authentic manner. So, if your company had invested in upskilling and training people prior to this crisis in how to do this in a managed and highly effective way maybe, just maybe you would remain front of mind ahead of your competitor not only throughout this crisis but when we all come through the other side.

If you and your company would like to explore how I might help you better understand and deliver on these changes, along with ideas to help mitigate risk then by all means drop me a DM and we can set up a call TODAY.