Social Media Fear and the SMASBO

I asked this question last week at Be2Camp, “Are you afraid of social media?” After a few looks around the room people started to put their hands up – not all, but enough for the question to stick in my mind as something to discuss here.

It’s not the first time I’ve asked this question. Generally when I do – especially on a 1-2-1 basis – people open up and tell me that it scares the S**T out of them… Now you might be saying ‘what is there to be afraid of ?’ Well, to-date most responses have been combinations of fear of the unknown, fear of lack of privacy, fear of retribution and/or negative response and even fear of engagement – what if people engage and what if they don’t…

So I hope that the following will come across as a kind of virtual social media ‘chill pill..’

Social media business use – what people worry about

Although the fears are slightly different, it doesn’t matter whether you want to use Social Media to promote you, an organisation or high profile brand, people have the same inherent fears, and these are:

• Lack of knowledge
• General apathy and ignorance
• Privacy issues – especially as there’s now a grey line between your business and personal accounts – as more and more customers get to know the ‘people’ behind the brand label…
• ROI, the traditional return on investment – but as you’ll know if you’ve read my previous posts, I actually believe the new ROI is return on involvement (Prescribing return on involvement for the new digital economy and ‘You can’t bend the Return on Involvement rules‘)

But those aren’t all of them, and the following are ones that come up time and again:

Afraid of Feedback

As I said, one of the main fears here is feedback… So many organisations are terrified of feedback. But let’s think about that for a minute – you can’t be expected to skate on ice for the first time perfectly can you! But you know in advance, as soon as you’ve made your mind up about going, that you’re going to fall over, but you take steps to limit the amount of pain you will feel through damage limitation. The same applies here. Think about things in advance…

There are of course ‘practices’ that your customers or clients expect – transparency, honesty, integrity – in other words … the real you. If people are seeing you being productive, not hard selling, helpful and having fun then they will engage. However, when there’s a problem, and I mean when not if, then people want to see you take action to put it right, so remember that:

Delight can arise as the result of great experience, or, because you handled an experience that was less than great … In a great way.

Fear of wasting time, money and resources

Is social media worth the time and effort? Simply, yes! I get to speak to many different businesses – large and small, and up to now, I haven’t come across one that couldn’t benefit in someway from using social media to enhance their communications. In fact, the ones that are using social media in the right way are finding that the relationships they had before are reaching far deeper levels and it allows them to act quickly when then need to and be pro-active to keep ahead of the curve. I say this also from my perspective being involved in business development… A blog for next week perhaps? (let me know)

Fear of employing the wrong people

More and more companies are using social media to find prospective employees – and vet them. And they want these people to have not just an understanding of social media but they want them to know what tone they need to communicate in based on a specific platforms. Also, more companies are adding a Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn feeds to their own websites and there are now and more company employees with their own blogs than ever before…

And here’s the fear ‘chill pill’

The social media fear is real… but it’s controllable. I mean it’s not like you’re going to be on ‘I’m a Celebrity’ and get asked to eat or be covered in fish guts is it… or fly on plane (yes I’m afraid of flying…!) now that is something that doesn’t appeal at all.

The real fear factor I believe at the heart of all of the above can be expressed simlly as ‘fear of acceptance’. We want to feel apart of something, we want to belong. But communicating through social media is almost the same as when you move house, i.e. When you move into your new home you go down the local pub, chat with the people behind the bar or the local shop – because they know what the ‘tone of the village’ is like. They tell you places to go, places you definately shouldn’t go and let you know that Mrs Samson in Number 73 likes to speak her mind… the same applies with social media. So ask your customers or clients how they like to interact online and start engaging with them there before venturing out – they’ll let you know how you’re getting on

From a professional standpoint, the fear factor can be controlled just by remembering how you naturally behave offline. Yes, you’ll find some people online that should have a SMASBO (Social Media Anti-Social Behaviour Order) but you’re not one of them. So, just be transparent in what you say, be you and become a trusted source for the people you engage with and the people around you.

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Tagged as: acceptance, enagegment, fear, feedback, return on involvement, SMASBO, Social Media