Path To Peace
One of the key differentiators between the Web 1.0 world and Web 2.0 is that Web 1.0 was defined by shouting out one way messages to consumers where Web 2.0 is about conversing, sharing, and in many cases paying it forward. Ironically, when I visit the blogs and websites of some of the top social media personalities in the industry, I find websites with brash “Hire Me” graphics and a lot of copy written in second person.
This past Sunday morning while catching up on trade blogs, I came across a good post about using Twitter lists on Mashable. Not being familiar with the author, I went to her personal blog to check it out. The most recent post she had about her dedication of her birthday to cause she is involved in related to the Rwanda crisis called Path To Peace. An no where to be found on this site was the typical horn tooting that has become way to popular on the sites of influential social media professionals. How refreshing! I was also really impressed with the project Path To Peace as it is an effort focused on the future versus the past of Rwandans.
Getting back on topic, one tendency in social media has been the obsession with numbers of followers, retweets, etc. I think all marketers should take a step back, however, and evaluate their social media presence against softer measures such as community contribution including paying it forward. How many posts, retweets, or track backs have you or your company made to help others? Have you promoted a cause? Are you giving before you sell your services?
Taking my own advice I am going to specifically ask the question of my employees when it comes to our sites such as MidwestSportsFans.Com and DallasSportsFans.Com as well as this one I am writing on. I will say that this week alone I handed an influential social media consultant in the Dallas area a huge opportunity that was better suited for his experience versus ours. I also brought one of our favorite SEM firms into a great opportunity and contracts are already being exchanged. I’m feeling great about the “thank you” I got from both these partners of ours much more than any retweets and track backs I’ve gotten this week. Still, I really have to think through how to quantify this and what the social media world is missing in terms of tracking people “paying it forward”.
