Being Present

Ashton Kutcher teaches us many things.  Most recently, a valuable lesson about social media participation.  In case you missed the story, Ashton tweeted about the firing of Penn State football coach Joe Paterno, unaware of the facts surrounding the situation.  His tweet read, "How do you fire Jo Pa? #insult #noclass as a hawkeye fan I find it in poor taste."  Once familiar with the sex abuse cover-up allegations that led to the famous coach’s firing, Ashton deleted the tweet, apologized and vowed to take a break from twitter for a while, turning over his account to his public relations team.

For brand managers, this should be a teaching moment about something much larger than the need to think and gather all the facts before we speak (or publish).  Ashton’s error is representative of a larger faux pas committed regularly by tons of brands via social media – the act of not being present.  Respectful social interaction requires attention, a commodity in short supply these days.

We live in a time-crunched society and as a result, it’s only natural to seek efficiencies where we can.  When it comes to social engagement, the need to be efficient should never outweigh the need to be present.  It's never fun to be in conversation with that guy who’s looking over your shoulder the whole time, trying to make eyes with the toothy blonde. 

Social media participation really challenges our commitment to be present.  For social media professionals, there are tools, such as Hootsuite, that promote aggregating information from multiple platforms and publishing to multiple platforms from a dashboard.  How convenient?  While monitoring information from a dashboard may be an efficient process, publishing from it frequently shortchanges the user experience. 

For example, creating a post on Hootsuite to be automatically shared on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn means that it must be limited to 140 characters, to render in its entirety on Twitter.  Perhaps this communication would have been better shared separately on Facebook with greater detail and uploaded with an image.  Do we really speak to our twitter audience the same way that we speak to our LinkedIn audience?  Probably not, considering that one audience is dressed casually while the other is wearing business attire. 

Constant Contact and other email applications allow us to publish email blast content to social media networks via automated process.  The score of this game:  Efficiency 1, Brand Experience 0.  When a Facebook visitor sees an automated post to a brand’s Wall, it essentially says, “Too busy to really be here, but here’s today’s post, enjoy, gotta go!”

The benefits of brand participation in social media include humanizing the brand, joining the conversation and servicing customers on their terms.  Doing it right takes time and attention.  Good friends make time for each other.  Brands should make time to be present when engaging socially.