Dear Zuzana, dear all,
I am sceptic, critical, rationalist type. And I see relativity in a lot of things around us. What means "engaging"? If it is an action of communicating with audiences, in multiple and diverse ways, giving and receiving feedback, in this way a corporation will not keep the pace. Because addressing thousands of individuals, listening to them on a one by one basis, this is disruptive. No corporation will have, but will pretend, such a disruptive communication approach as no corporation has the ressources to do this. So if by engaging we mean "engaging", this would mean splitting the communication corporation to fit the segmentation of the real population. So if engaging is at the level of numbers, gender, race, education, residence, this would not be engaging. Example, could you engage with your neigbours ? With how many, and could you do it simultaneously ?
For the reasons explained before: yes, if the corporations are mad enough to really engage, this could pose a risk to them. What we see is that corporations pretend that they are engaged with social media, but are they really engaged ? Do we have a methodology agreed to benchmark engagement with social media ?
I also would point to the fact that real communication and real engagement is not possible. No real communication is possible because this would mean that the corporation, step by step, listening to their customers, would aim to modify the product/service to satisfy the consumer, to the very end that it would not be economic to produce it ? Because always a consumer would require, let's presume, a cheap Ferrari ! Engaging is mostly about listenning to consumers, taking feedback and adapting services and products? Could this happen? I think no. Corporations want to sell us many things we do not need. Today you buy a TV set that tomorrow is old. Although yo can keep a TV set for 4-5 years, as fast you have buyed one, the next one is on OOH.
I am sceptic, critical, rationalist type. And I see relativity in a lot of things around us. What means "engaging"? If it is an action of communicating with audiences, in multiple and diverse ways, giving and receiving feedback, in this way a corporation will not keep the pace. Because addressing thousands of individuals, listening to them on a one by one basis, this is disruptive. No corporation will have, but will pretend, such a disruptive communication approach as no corporation has the ressources to do this. So if by engaging we mean "engaging", this would mean splitting the communication corporation to fit the segmentation of the real population. So if engaging is at the level of numbers, gender, race, education, residence, this would not be engaging. Example, could you engage with your neigbours ? With how many, and could you do it simultaneously ?
For the reasons explained before: yes, if the corporations are mad enough to really engage, this could pose a risk to them. What we see is that corporations pretend that they are engaged with social media, but are they really engaged ? Do we have a methodology agreed to benchmark engagement with social media ?
I also would point to the fact that real communication and real engagement is not possible. No real communication is possible because this would mean that the corporation, step by step, listening to their customers, would aim to modify the product/service to satisfy the consumer, to the very end that it would not be economic to produce it ? Because always a consumer would require, let's presume, a cheap Ferrari ! Engaging is mostly about listenning to consumers, taking feedback and adapting services and products? Could this happen? I think no. Corporations want to sell us many things we do not need. Today you buy a TV set that tomorrow is old. Although yo can keep a TV set for 4-5 years, as fast you have buyed one, the next one is on OOH.
In real terms, engaging would mean the lost of the identity of a corporation. Nowadays corporations are pretending that they are truly engaged, play small games of engagement, and yes, we all are astonished afterwards. But did they corporations changed the product? Did a tobbaco company closed its doors/capacity for its production is damaging the health? Etc....etc....There is large scale play about engagement and corporations.
My case is that the real point of social media, is that it breaks the silence spiral described by Noelle-Neumann: people which are afraid to speak in their inner circle, because they tend to conform to social norms, break-out in Facebook, Twitter, make their group of friends and speak out. Social media is not new. Yahoo! Groups are old age (discussion groups they have acquired in the 90's), discussion lists at the beginning of the Internet existed, messenger is another example (for how many years this service exists?), mobile phone is an instrument of social media (conferencing via phone is available in GSM from the beginning, or real-time chatting through GSM platform). Social media are forums, which are with us for many years around. What is new is the importance we give to them today.
But I wouldn't make of social media the god above all. Be cautious when a corporation pretends is engaged with social media. Is it indeed ? How it did affect the product or the service it provides ? And is accountable and transparent to explain how listening to customers made the product better and in which way? Or is it a spinnning exercise whose end we cannot have the time and ressources to check and fail in the end to be convinced: "Whoa, that big corporation listened to us customers!". Today a corporation barely recognizes that it has problems, see Toyota case. The attracting power of wishful thinking is sometimes blinding us.
