04 Oct

Lessons from Facebook Addicts

I’ve been seeing and hearing so much lately about how individuals can’t do without their daily (or is that hourly?) fix of Facebook that I decided to rock the boat a little bit. So I took an intended Facebook vacation last week. My “vacation” wasn’t as simple as just not logging into my account. I went as far as deactivating my account. Now did that rock the boat, and how!

People were going crazy and asking me if I was okay or if they had done anything wrong. The reactions I got were so quick, so strong and so emphatic it was as though I had really done something unimaginable. Anyway, so I observed all the frantic reactions and got back on Facebook – my planned Facebook vacation lasted 3 days, not the intended week. Calm waters again around me!

We could laugh it off and ridicule the fact that Facebook seems to be the new caffeine for our culture that most people can’t do without. However, I think there’s also a lesson to be learned here – loyalty and habit forming can be leveraged to create a positive impact on the social fabric in the corporate world.

Forming Habits that Become Corporate Best Practices

Because Rome Wasn’t Built in a Day…And Neither Was Facebook!

Annoying as it can become, when used effectively in the right measure and with strategic measurement mechanisms, corporate social media can be very useful. Not just for lead generation and lead nurturing, but to maintain the overall openness of communication channels where information adds value to all audiences. I am not saying that Facebook is or can be the best B2B marketing tool; Facebook is only an example I used to make a point that loyalty and habit forming components are things that should be emulated in the corporate world. When good habits gather momentum and spread to a larger corporate community, they transform into standard best practices that everyone can benefit from.

Think about it, a sales rep can’t start her day without checking Facebook updates. A similar habit could be to start the day by checking the status of “hot leads”. The same way as she feels compelled to say who she is meeting for lunch and where on her Facebook status, reaching out to the top 5 hot leads could help move them towards conversion / closure. Or perhaps making a habit to dig into the company’s homegrown leads database and reaching out to at least 2 per day could generate great results.

These are just grass root level examples of corporate habit-forming culture that I am mentioning here. At a senior executive level and even from a company-wide perspective, there are so many practices one can ingrain into the corporate culture that can make an organization stand out from its competitors and win greater audience mindshare. In Facebook terminology, there are so many ways to get more customers and prospects to “like” you or “become fans” of your organization.

Sounds like a worthy goal? Does your company handbook outline corporate habits that you’d like every employee to imbibe? More importantly, are the essentials of this handbook written on the minds of every member of your team? That, in my opinion, is critical! Comments?

PS: Now here’s what I think is complete Facebook madness – German Press Agency (DPA) reported that a couple in Israel has named their third child (daughter), “Like”! Why? Because the parents are in love with Facebook and its “Like” feature. Thank heavens they are not that crazy about YouTube, or think what the poor baby would be called!