Chris Brogan talks about the importance of practicing what you preach
I had a chance to chat with my new friend, Chris Brogan, at Blog Indiana (a killer event btw) a couple of weeks ago. I've been frustrated with many of my colleagues in marketing broadly as they preach to clients, but don't practice what they preach. Its a different world. You didn't need to make ads for yourself 30 years ago – your client work sold your work. With PR, you don't need to get placements or stories for yourself. But social is different, you've got walk the walk. "Eating your own dog food", as Chris says, is critical. Watch the video or read the list to get the gems from our conversation on how to practice what you preach.
- You've got to embed it in your lifestyle
- The response time is minutes
- Personal interactions can teach you how to use the tools
- Get in deep – don't skim the surface – it wont work
- Use it in the appropriate place
- Social world people – get out with the humans – you can't do it from a laptop
- Have a process in place
- Convergence works – traditional and social media
- You have to understand how humans interact
- Listen to the people who support you, to the people who you compete with, everybody around you.
- Show love to the people that love you – social media karma
- Integrate your approach – SMS, email, social, and more
- Remember to build trust
- Collect your conversations where your business is happening
- Be there before the sale – let people get to know your company in a human way
Duncan Alney Facebook | Twitter | Naymz | Blip.fm
There’s a difference between “eating your own dogfood” and “practicing what you preach.”
The former is a software industry term which means that you should actively use your own product during development. It’s akin to a chef tasting their own soup while it’s on the stove.
The latter is an old expression referring to hypocrisy. If your provide absolutist moral teachings, you should uphold those principles in your life.
Social media is not product development nor is it moralizing. Sure, practicing the social media techniques you promote might be a good way to develop expertise, but by analogy, you don’t need to personally have diabetes to provide good counseling and medicine to those who do. Sure, building a social media product (or series of practices) and using them during development might help improve your understanding, but it’s not required.
A great example of this is Craig Newmark. He is the founder of one of the most successful Internet properties in history which enables incredible social interactions in almost every imaginable dimension of discourse and commerce. But the founder of Craigslist is famously reclusive and mostly anti-social. I would argue that Newmark does not make good use of his own site or the culture he enabled.
Success in social media is like success in all social environments: it’s not really about practices but authenticity. I personally don’t care if a social media expert is an expert social media practitioner, just like a pro golf coach may not play a particularly great golf game. I care what they know and how they can help me. That’s authentic expertise; that’s what really matters.
@robbyslaughter
Comment by Robby Slaughter on September 2, 2009 at 10:42 am