Reading time ~8 minutes
If you’ve ever come into contact with Gary Vaynerchuk, you may already be familiar with some of the points discussed in this piece. Vaynerchuk wrote a book called “The Thank You Economy” in 2011, which is antediluvian by today’s standards, but a lot of the lessons gleaned from this book still apply today, as they are universal and timeless.
The book discusses how to connect with our clients and audience in the digital age by drawing parallels to the way business used to be done before the post-industrial age (roughly before the great depression), after WWII and today. Although the book focuses heavily on how to use social media to your advantage when it comes to promoting and growing your business, the gist of his thesis is those old school principles of serving and caring customers are returning in force, primarily because in the digital age, there is no such thing as privacy anymore. As a result, businesses are going to be forced to return to the way business was done for centuries before the advent of the industrial revolution and the fast-paced world changes that came with it, to create loyalty and keep customers around in the long term.
What is the thank you economy?
In our great-grandparents’ time, business was very local. If you needed meat, you couldn’t get it at the local supermarket, where nowadays it can be bought without ever having to talk to a human (I’m looking at you automated check-outs). Instead, you had to go to the local butcher, which likely belonged to someone in your inner social circle. They knew you and your kids by name and would occasionally toss a free cut of meat with your weekly purchase or let your kids have a couple of slices of that delicious prosciutto they had just got in, as a thank you for being a faithful customer. Back then, business was personal, rooted in empathy and understanding. By knowing you and your daily struggles personally, the butcher had a vested interest in your well being and so being kind, polite and deferent to you was commonplace for business owners. By the same token, when police officers were walking their beats, they had an interest in being perceived as an integral part of their community and policing had more to do with interacting with people and preventative policing than catching people in the act and chasing them with patrol cars, literally and figuratively being cut off from the world around them.
I’m a firm believer in the fact that we cannot fear what we know and understand. What this means, in this case, is that by being an integral part of the community and knowing personally the people we deal with daily, all possible fear, resentment of strangers is virtually impossible. Conversely, the advent of the automobile reduced the impact of the community on our lives. People started moving further and further away from pockets of density, and arguably, social life, to live in suburban detached homes where it is easy to not talk to anyone all day by driving to and from it without experiencing any form of social interaction.
How has that state of affairs changed in the digital world?
Vaynerchuk posits that with the advent of social media, we are facing a tremendous, not-to-be-wasted opportunity to connect in a meaningful, community-oriented way with our audiences and clients. While this book was written 8 years ago and a lot has changed in our understanding of social media since (listen to more about the scandals that are constantly plaguing Facebook and Twitter), the intellectual foundation of his advice is still very solid, as it applies to any platform, existing and future ones alike.
While we now know that social media platforms are designed to take advantage of our worst hard-wired evolutionary traits (echo chambers anyone?), it is also up to us to make use of them in a responsible fashion as we learn to overcome our evolved default behaviours. Social media is no different from any other kind of tool: if used improperly, it can very quickly turn into a weapon. As some of us have learned the hard way, we don’t often think that digital tools may cause physical harm, but they can. Even in the absence of physical harm, the acute emotional or psychological distress they can trigger can also have dire consequences and we all have to internalize these lessons to make responsible use of social media. A table saw, used by a complete noob, untrained in basic safety precautions, will likely end up in cut fingers and blood splatter, the same way unchecked social media usage can lead to feeling depressed or in the worst of cases, suicide attempts.
We cannot rely on these social media companies to suddenly do an about-face and care about us in ways that they haven’t before: the incentives they respond to are simply not aligned with the interests of their users and other stakeholders. They follow the money and the money is going in the opposite direction from the platforms’ users best interests. We have to become responsible users and learn to recognize the much-discussed echo chambers that are known to spontaneously sprout on social media, often as the result of their algorithms working in favour of creating constant, feverish and addictive behaviours.
Is it all that bad?
The short answer is no. There are tremendous opportunities to flip the social media platforms on their heads and use them to our advantage. Twitter and Linkedin are still great to have meaningful conversations with the people that are engaged and interested in the same topics as us. As long as you ignore all the things news and politics related. Inflammatory comments designed to trigger a response are having the intended effect if you respond to it with an air of offended righteousness. Trust me on this one, you’re better off unfollowing Trump that being offended at his every tweet.
Similarly, Instagram is amazing at sharing visual stories that are both meaningful and engaging, and I’m not talking about toddlers and puppies, although these can be adorable and have never hurt anyone. The best way to make the most out of social media is to act on these platforms the same way you would act in person. Though I still don’t know what facebook is good for? Creeping your ex perhaps? Here are some of the things that can lead to social media greatness:
Be nice: if you treat people the way you would like to be treated in person, there are innumerable ways to make someone’s day.
Be authentic: If there is the slightest whiff that the way you portray yourself on social media is inauthentic or contrived, people will run away from you faster than Usain Bolt.
Always engage people: If your audience takes the time to try and engage with you, you owe to them (and yourself) to engage in a meaningful way. If you’re not ready to do so, you have no business being on social media.
Be platform agnostic: It’s been said before, it makes no sense to put all your eggs in one basket and solely rely on social media platform to do all your outreach, but if you pick a handful of platforms that make sense for your business, and use them to both engage with your audience where they are but also take advantage of hyperlinks to send them back to the assets you own (such as your website) then you’re golden, as you are now spreading the risk across multiple platforms and if one of them goes belly up, you’re not suddenly finding yourself rudderless.
Be patient: good marketing takes time and you cannot start something new tomorrow and then complain the following week that you’re not getting any engagement. There is no shortcut to greatness, so it’s more important to design an outreach strategy that works for you and stick with it for a while. If after a certain amount of time nothing changes, it may be time to revisit, but please be patient and give yourself the time to be successful. If it’s hard for you to wait and you’re impatient, put your phone down and go engage with people in real life.
Ignore the metrics: We live in a world where everything is measured and analyzed to death. Data mining everything is not a viable substitute for intuition, real-life interaction and experience. If you must pay attention to metrics, make sure that you pick meaningful ones and be wary of basing your accountability systems solely on metrics, as many of the important things in business and life are not easily quantifiable.
Conclusion
Ultimately, what I’ve described above are mere tactics on how to tackle social media. The way you will show up on there will be a reflection of your organization’s culture, and if you have none, your social media presence will feel empty and meaningless. Defining a great culture is a lot of hard work and takes a long time, but those who persist at it often end up being very successful in business, as they have developed something greater than the sum of its parts. Zappos and Roma Moulding are two shining examples out there, but there are many more of these to be studied.
Without culture, your social media efforts will be in vain. Now go make someone’s day with a random act of kindness.
Arnaud Marthouret is the founder of rvltr and leads their strategy, visual communications and media efforts. He has helped numerous architects and interior designers promote themselves in their best light - pun intended - to help them run more effective practices and grow in a meaningful way.
If you have questions about this article or rvltr or want to chat about your strategy and communications, you can leave a comment, share with a friend, or reach him at arnaudrvltr.studio.