Social applicability

I’ll take social applicability for $500, Alex. It is a definition of this word.  Alex, I think it’s…What is Relevance? Ding, ding, ding, ding. That is correct! And more and more companies are winning the relevance prize by engaging in social media. Isn’t it interesting that the definition includes the word ‘social’? There it is, right there.

Brian Solis recently wrote about the rewards of engagement in social media. And in his article, under engage or die, he included comments from a recent study. There is now an expectation that businesses not only have a presence, but that they engage their community in social networks. Here’s one of the comments, “….they (businesses) need a strong electronic presence or you doubt their relevance in today’s marketplace.” Even if the number of people who feel this way is low, it’s growing.

Relevance

If you are someone who has continued to tune into American Idol, you will be very familiar with Simon Cowell using ‘relevant’ as part of his critique, in both a positive and negative way. In the positive, it was for a contestant who took an old song and put their mark on it making it fresh and current. In the negative, well, it was for someone who didn’t do this.

Now, initiating social media is one part of becoming relevant, but like the Idol example, it’s what you do with it that counts. You would not be relevant if you set up a blog and only copied your press releases in it, or tweeted only about your company’s news. You may have given people the ability to comment on these things, but why would they? Most likely they would not, because it is not relevant to them.

As Tara Hunt said in her book ‘The Whuffie Factor’, “You are embarking on the process of shifting from being a market capitalist into a social capitalist. That is, one who is more concerned about raising social capital rather than market capital (although the latter will come as a result of the former).” That shift is happening. Making that shift means you continue to strive to be relatable to your customer and prospective customer.

The conversation in your market has already started. If you are only providing (pushing) packaged marketing messages, you are not in the conversation. Your relevance is slipping because lively, real time exchanges of ideas are happening in someone else’s blog and network…and without you.

Don’t slip and fall. Just be willing to trip a little while making the shift. Don’t worry, lots of tripping going on as everyone is figuring out how best to use social media for their business. But these businesses are willing to get a few scrapes and bruises in order to keep their relevance ranking high.

Relevant is not always easy. Hey, I had a hard time finding a relevant image for this post. I went with the idea of ‘fresh’.

How are you keeping your business socially applicable, a.k.a. relevant?

(photo by: omdur)