People are social, not media

…so start thinking about your own people…
A lot of tweets, articles and blogposts deal with social media and how social media is transforming the world.

Look at what happened in Tunesia and Egypt. Social media helped the revolution, butit’s still thanks to organized and motivated people that things start to move. Facebook and Twitter are merely the facilitators.

Another discussion that is raging on is the question whether companies should twitter under their company name or under employees-names linked to the company. Interesting: this week I came across two articles regarding this issue. One was pleading for companies to use their own name, the other one was doing the exact opposite.

I personally think it depends on the size of the company and the activity you’re in. There’s no correct answer. But, if you do take a decision, stick to it. There’s nothing more annoying for people to be confronted with constant change. Let alone the change of a name on twitter, once you get used to it.

What is most important, apart from personal AND corporate twitter-accounts, are the people behind it. Most of the time, the twitter-accounts are being used by marketing- and communication people, sometimes even by CEO’s themselves. Rarely the twitter-activity drips down through the entire organisation. And that’s where people get it wrong. A typical spokesperson for a company will always embellish the truth, accentuate the positive and defend the brand for all that it’s worth (exept in real crisis situations).

Reality differs completely. Everybody knows that not everything goes as it should: callcenters generate frustration, helpdesk don’t always help, invoicing is sometimes incorrect, services and products tend to fail. So why focus only on the positve on twitter or facebook?

Twitter makes it necessary for all brands to carefully review their customer (and prospect) interactions. Advertising is recognized as ‘advertising’, but twitter is recognized as real and personal. So, if the contacts with the brand in real life differ completely from the Twitterverse, you’ve got a potential drama on your hand.

That’s why it’s so important to, before starting to tweet, motivate and train your own people in being customer-centric all the way. Only if your salesforce, dealers, outlets, callcenters and representativs all are motivated and organized to carry out the brand in action… it’s really usefull to start tweeting how great you are, because then you’ll truly be great as a brand.

Just like the Egyptian people: they are one voice, one experience. How are your people?