Considering that more than half of all Americans are using social media in some form, though many of them badly (I’m looking at you, Rep. Dan Gordon) there’s clearly a temptation to say that companies should be doing all they can to reach out to customers using the various channels. At least, that’s the position of tech wonder-boy Josh James in his guest post on Forbes.com this week.
It’s not a terribly surprising argument coming from someone in the tech industry, especially someone who is running a start-up, like James. But, look at this example of how awesome social media is:
One day I tweeted about a product feature that I liked. Two weeks later in a meeting with engineering, I was shown our product with that particular feature built in. We never had a meeting to discuss it. I never sent a memo. The engineer took the cue and figured out how to make the product better. That was pretty amazing.
That is pretty amazing, Josh. You know what else is amazing to your front-line management? Direct communication! I know, email is totes old-fashioned, but I bet if you’d just fired off one of those archaic missives, you would have gotten the same result. Throwing a Twitter message into the ether guarantees you nothing, but, good show!
His primary thesis is that social media allows more direct relationships with customers and the opportunity to innovate the manner in which services are provided. This is true, in the right industry. James apparently doesn’t understand that is also provides a direct relationship with everyone in the world, even those who don’t like your company very much.
How do you think that would work out for the CEO of Goldman Sachs? Or BP? Or Shell, who has already found out that even their marketing staff is really, really bad at social media. Do those companies, or many of the other in the Fortune 500, really want the public to know their every move? Guarantee Goldman doesn’t want the masses knowing about their latest derivative innovation.
Hell, Rupert Murdoch is on Twitter, and that doesn’t always work out well from a PR perspective.
Naturally, James has a solution-don’t put the real CEO on Twitter:
Social takes significant time and commitment, plus it’s an entirely new way of engaging with the world. But this argument strikes me as particularly odd because CEOs have people who can help filter the tweets and Facebook messages just like they filter their email and voicemail messages.
That’s the perfect way to connect Fortune 500 CEOs with the masses, another PR channel. Genius.
