Now that social media in wine and hospitality seems mainstream, facebook fan pages are de rigeur, and the twitter, flickr, fb, digg, etc. logos are plastered everywhere, there’s something significant missing in the translation of the message on connecting. Referring back to the cocktail party analogy, would you host a party and not be there? Invite guests to your home to connect and entertain them and leave everything up to a catering staff for interacting with your guests?
I sure hope you answered no to both questions. If you did, why on earth would you launch a social media program and issue automatic direct messages to your guests? Why would you post generic, monthly or weekly messages (imagine a PA system a la high school) announcing, shouting at people something they didn’t ask you about? Do you understand the concept of real conversation? If I come to your home, I’m excited to see YOU…and if you have the butler answer the door, the bartender entertain me and the cook tell me loads of information, guess what…I’m probably not coming back. Nor will I tell my friends anything positive about that experience.
Maybe you’re mislead by the cold, technological tool in front of you…your laptop (i-phone, Storm, whatever). What you must not forget is that there are real, flesh and blood, passionate people on the other end who love wine, hospitality, their friends, family, travel, SCUBA, or whatever FAR more than they love your bottom line. While technology extends our reach by several orders of magnitude greater than we can imagine, you cannot lose your sensitivity, your listening skills, your inter-personal talents in the hopes of automating connection. Businesses hoping to increase their business without getting involved, asking questions, caring and listening are doomed to fail, and fail on a large scale in public.
Our friend @winebratsf is right. And she is doing businesses a service by letting them know what she wants and why she’s there. Many people I know just “unfollow” a business that gets impersonal, automated or uninteresting. If you can’t make the personal investment in the relationships, you are in the wrong place. Give more than you get. Provide value. Care. Share.
This venting session is over.
Thanks for reading. Cheers!
Right on, Lisa! Thanks for posting your vent so I didn’t have to!
Thanks. Actually, though this post came organically from my current experiences, and was further prompted by Thea’s twitter post, Chris Brogan had a recent, eloquent, more thorough post or series on his blog here :
http://www.chrisbrogan.com/communication-tools-and-levels-of-interruption/
Always credit, where credit is due.
Just found you blog via drXeNo. Great topic. I am journaling my experience as a winery intern in Healdsburg, CA! As a newcomer to blogging, I find articles like this to be of great value. Hard enough to get people to my blog. Certainly don’t want to drive them away.
Can’t wait to explore some of your other posts. I took scuba way back in the day. Maybe now that I’m in CA, I’ll revisit diving.
thanks –AP
Thank you for this post! I’m nearly afraid of following people on twitter, because getting spam-DM’s. In most cases it starts with a automatic welcome DM. How personal
Great job on the article. I can’t recall how many times I am excited to connect with a new wine-related contact that looks promising and then get a generic sales message or even worse – a mafia wars invitation!
Twitter is a community. We interact. We connect. We collaborate. We relate. The person with the most followers doesn’t win. The person with the best relationships will always come out on top in the long-term.
Yep…sorta like a form letter…I barely suffer those from my wine clubs. Frankly, I don’t even read them. So wineries put a lot of time n energy into creating these letters I don’t read…as a club member…does anyone else read them?
IMPERSONAL is the quickest way to drive a consumer/customer away…the company that can personalize their relationships faster than the competition will set the standard and win business. (especially mine!)
I’ve just come up from the depths of my social media torpor to see a brilliant piece from you, Lisa! Nicely done, despite what you think this was sufficiently eloquent and direct to get the point across to wineries and other mindless DM-generating sources.
Now if only they would READ this and stop the spam mentality.
I totally agree with your article..but I think you can take it a step further. While I want real interaction over Facebook and Twitter, I want it even more face to face. When the actual flesh and blood is before you, don’t check out to tweet, fb, text, or even take phone calls. Electronic connections can happen after you are finished with the flesh and blood connection right in front of you.
Absofreakinglutely! Engage me. Send me something automated and we’ll be snowshoeing in hell before you get the follow back. There’s a local loan/self proclaimed social media guru/asshat who I followed a couple of months back. He sent me an automated DM with a friggin’ video where he’s saying he really couldn’t follow back because he was so self important. There’s a dude that just doesn’t get it. I blew him up on Twitter and then he followed me on Facebook. Social media fail.
I totally agree. Impersonal DMs/Twitter posts are my MAIN reason why I UNfollow someone.
I Tweeted about it:
http://twitter.com/gsbmartin/status/4009050717
Well written! A follower put me on his email list and sent me a generic (horribly written) email. I took the time to politely let him know that he isn’t going to make “friends” this way. He wrote back a generic, “thanks for your feedback” and spammed me again the next week. I used spam sieve to block him forever. Too bad for him.
You’re my hero!
Thanks, Randy, Becky, WineDog, Martin, Alana, WineHarlot!
Interesting point, Becky…at tweet-ups and or wine events, many of us DO spend probably too much time communing with our handheld thingy instead of “more face to face” …I guess partially to connect the folks online by some small e-thread. But I completely agree: we’re missing out on the whole point of connecting if our noses are buried in electronic updates.
Though I do enjoy posting a quick 12Seconds.TV video of my companions at some event…before I put the Blackberry away
L
Great Analogies there, I think the problem stems from the fact that businesses are more used to push marketing and one way messages having used email for so many years. The problem most companies will not be successful if they take this approach to sites like twitter and facebook which expect more of a two way conversation.
I have a feeling that these social sites are just another way of getting spam, unwanted messages ect . I mean in real life i know about 70-80 people that i can relate to everyday, but on socials, facebook and so i should have 4.000 so called friends? Yeah, right.