The CX Blog

I get these questions sometimes from Boomer bosses who are starting to feel a little twitchy about twitter and the likes. Reminds me of the generation-appropriate reference to Bob Dylan’s Ballad of a Thin Man:

Because something is happening here
But you don’t know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?

(For the Gen X, Y, and Z’ers out there: Bob Dylan was singing to the gray haired boss-man of his age. Deja Vu all over again.)

So this week the exec question from the Well-Established-Corp was along the lines of “I’m interested in This Topic but where do I start?” By topic, the exec meant: social media writ large, but even the name Social Media is a wee scary and just saying it may put one in the deep end without the toe-dipping, comfort gauging phase. I’m not kidding or poking fun here. Imagine the scene: you have a generation coming up that may have the nuts-and-bolts about running a business scattered about, but this whole ever-expanding universe of rapid info-sharing is as habitual and natural to them as watching cable news.

(That’s a whole nuther topic: the gen that has the “interwebs thingy” down to a fine art can learn from the tried and tested exec, and the exec needs to brave the cold dunk of diving in and abandoning usual comfort zones in favor of this new thing that will not–guaranteed: will not–go away.)

The truth is, the gray hair demographic is the fastest growing group on Facebook and other apps, even though they comprise a smaller percentage of the whole..by a lot. But still. The good news: this stuff is pretty easy. I mean, you’re not trying to learn how to build apps, you’re just trying to conceptually understand how it works, right? There are all kinds of ways you can use Facebook, Twitter, blogs, YouTube and other apps to your great advantage, and you should having a working understanding of these things. Oh yeah, and it’s fun. That helps.

My advice to the exec: take a bootcamp approach (Here are some good options if you want to get out of town for this, or contact me for more ideas). Learn it for yourself over a weekend or a day or two with some guidance from Knowledgeable Ones. Once you see how it works for you, you will be able to grok what your spiffy Marketing Team is trying to tell you, or your passionate Service Team, or your sensitive and sensible PR Team, or any other group within your company.

And of course, since I’m part of the fast growing Social Media Club here in Seattle (twitter handle: @smcseattle), I’m going to put in a plug for Social Media Club. It’s an international organization with tons of chapters and activities and talks given by recognized experts, both local and global. So see if there’s one near you, or again, contact me and I’ll help you figure it out.

Sure, there are plenty of nuances. Not everything that’s being touted right now is going to work, and corporate transparency of the kind Social Media brings to the fore is a challenging thing to manage–requires a lot of smarts and planning, don’t kid yourself.

And then there are the Others. Everyone’s getting pretty tired of the rapid rise of scams and security problems on Twitter, and dumb, poorly thought out marketing campaigns using Facebook and other apps. They threaten the party for everyone. But I promise you this: get a basic understanding of the Holy Trinity (Facebook, Twitter, Blogs) and you will be able to think through the Social Media strategy with your team without feeling like you’re in the wilderness. Trust me on this.