I’ve got a bone to pick with Nick Corcodilos for writing this post over at InfoWorld. In it, Nick rants about a young woman straight out of college who rejected a job offer from a tech company because the company wasn’t “cool and hip.” Of course, he’s taking her words completely out of context and throwing her in a group of “cognoscenti” who “post our rants on screwoldfartcompanies.com and then meet back on MySpace with a double latte!”
Nick is absolutely right, trying to be cool has been the downfall of many companies. But, there is a big difference between social networking and being “cool.” As Nick writes it, there is no value in creating a presence on one or many of the social networks that keep popping up all around us. I hope he doesn’t really believe that, because that couldn’t be further from the truth.
Is social media and networking cool? I think so, but that’s certainly not the reason that I utilize those tools. I use them as a way to effectively and efficiently communicate with my family, friends, staff and most importantly, my customers.
Social networking is not about a bunch of people who are too cool for school. If a graduate turns down a job based on the fact that a company is not utilizing social media, they are not doing it because they think the company is “ugly.” The graduate is doing it because the company is showing that they are either 1) unfamiliar with the new technology available to them or 2) afraid to implement any kind of new strategy. Perhaps there are other reasons, but as an outsider looking in, I would be wary of working in any place that refused to even experiment a little with new media and technology. After all, as Nick says in his post, “Blogs and websites are free.”
I would never want to work for a company that I thought was going to frown on new ideas or innovation. College graduates these days realize that they are in the driver’s seat when it comes to applying for employment. Why would anyone choose to work at a company that was sending a non-verbal message that it was opposed to change or thinking outside of the box?
The way all of us do business is changing and the ball is no longer in any particular company’s court. The customer controls the way businesses operate and the products they release more than they ever have in the past. The “ugly” companies Nick refers to, while I’m sure are based on sound principles, would be good to extend the conversation to their customers. Can this be done without social media? Of course! Mom and pop businesses do it better than any of us and rarely use a computer. But, if you’re a company that wants to streamline the process and grow your company faster and more efficiently, then social media and networking are great tools for you to listen to what your customers are thinking and feeling. Social media allows every big corporation to operate like the mom and pop corner store in Smalltown, USA and that’s a powerful notion.
Integrity, credibility and profit will always be the base foundation that drives business. What social media allows your company to do is monitor those three principles on a much wider scale, gauge when and how you are swaying from that original goal, and give your faceless company a human side that consumers can relate to and interact with should they have comments, concerns or praise.
Word of mouth is a powerful tool in your marketing toolkit. Social media allows you to squash bad word of mouth while it’s in its infancy, while you harness and spread good word of mouth on a vast scale. We are moving into a world where business needs to be transparent. Social media offers your company a tool to be just that. So Nick, don’t think that social media is just a cool fad with no real value. No matter how large your company gets, social media gives you the unique opportunity to treat each and every customer as if they were your only client. And yeah, that is cool.
What do you think? Is social media and networking just a bunch of hipsters running around with “concomitant arrogance and I-am-cool posturing for foolish venture dollars?” Or is it foolish for a company, no matter how established, to refuse to accept social media as a viable tool for continued success? Have you experienced any sort of backlash, be it in hiring, marketing, operations, etc. that was directly related to the lack of a social media strategy? What do you think about all of this social networking mumbo-jumbo? Let’s continue the conversation in the comments section.
Thanks for letting me rag on you a bit, Nick.
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