This is my contribution in “Age of Conversation 3: It’s Time To Get Busy!” (emphasis added for this post). Read more about the project, or, even better, buy the book now.
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Social sustainability gets short shrift in branding. Reasons abound: it’s hard to define and measure quantitatively; it’s intangible, processual, and complex; it’s not as sexy as caring for the environment and not as immediately profitable. No wonder the People bottom line stays in the background.
It doesn’t have to be so. Define brand as the sum of your stakeholders’ experiences with your company or product, and conversation as “the informal exchange of ideas by spoken word”. Then, consider that conversation with the brand is part of the overall brand experience, and that the acquisition of ideas or information benefits both the brand and the stakeholder, injecting meaning into the interaction. Combine people, conversation, experience, and meaning, and social sustainability no longer appears so daunting.
Of course, people converse not with brands, but with other people. Every staff person interacting with a stakeholder engages in conversation on behalf of your brand, building the brand experience, creating meaning. Social media is one set of tools making brand conversations possible. Empowering your people with social media to converse with your stakeholders means shifting from centrally-planned corporate messaging to decentralized, personal interactions that reflect the diversity of your staff.
People talk like people, not like press releases. If there’s one principle to follow in conversing through social media for social sustainability, it’s to emulate the way you’d talk in person. Converse online as you’d converse offline: no shouting, no one-way broadcasts, no corporate speak. As a company, set goals and measurable results and supply sufficient resources to follow through on your brand conversations. Then, let your people converse.
Like threads in a loom, the myriad of conversations your employees have with your stakeholders, through social media or other channels, will weave your brand into being. Thanks to consistent conversation, your brand will become more experiential, more conversational, and more human. What’s more, by listening to, participating in, and engaging with your stakeholders’ community, the conversation will enhance your social sustainability.
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