Categories: Articles

Being Human

One of the best parts of these digital channels is the many amazing opportunities that are suddenly present for you to connect to people in the real world.

Whether it’s at an unconference like PodCamp or meeting your consumers at the retail level, there is nothing more real and powerful as "pressing the flesh," as they say. With that comes many challenges. With dashboards like TweetDeck and the ability to respond back to people with just a 140 characters, managing your time and connections to thousands of people can be pretty easy, but still time consuming. Meeting face-to-face is a much bigger effort and takes all of these digital relationships to another level.

"Would you like to sit next to you at dinner?"

That was the tag-line for one of the many famous ads that The Economist runs to promote their publication. The message is simple and pithy: by reading The Economist, you will become smarter and more well-informed. In turn, this will make you more interesting in social scenarios. No, this does not mean that you should run out and buy a subscription to The Economist (but it is a great magazine), the message of that ad resonates at a much different level in these very interesting online social circles that we all find ourselves in.

How great are you when people meet you in your protein form?

Blogging is not holding down a real world, face-to-face conversation, and being great at 140 characters on Twitter might not translate to sitting down and having a coffee with somebody. Many Marketers ask about how they can make these online social channels most effective for them from a marketing and communications perspective, the general strategic conversation always starts with, "how great is your product or service?" If the product, service and related brands don’t "live" in the real world, no amount of Facebook Fan Pages is going to help. It got me thinking, many people I know who are building their personal brand in these online channels might not be as good as they are online in real world scenarios. Think about the last event you attended, how many new people did you meet? How easy was it for you to strike up a conversation with someone you did not know?

Being human helps.

People always feedback that they love these Social Media channels because they feel like they are connecting to real people. I often wonder just how real they are. Yes, they are more expressive than any other type of communication we have seen to date. Yes, these tools make personal ideas and insights very public, and yes, it helps to be a real human being. The point is to really take a look at all of the content you are creating and publishing online and reflect on whether or not your public persona matches it (or, hopefully, surpasses it).

Here’s why…

When you connect in person, there will be some kind of expectation. You don’t want to set the bar too high and you definitely don’t want to set the bar too low. The bar has to be at the level with which you and your company are confident at. Ultimately, online and offline need to match up… and that’s a very tall order.

Do you think most people online live up to their online personas in the real world, or are do you think most people just talk the talk versus walk the walk?

Mitch Joel

Mitch Joel lives at the intersection of technology, business transformation and consumer culture. He is the Executive Director of Next Era Institute, a strategic intelligence platform helping leaders understand the forces reshaping business, technology, culture and society. The Institute identifies which shifts matter, explores their wider significance and translates them into strategic direction and momentum. Mitch is also a globally recognized keynote speaker. He has delivered thousands of presentations across both B2B and B2C industries to organizations including Google, Walmart, LEGO, Shopify, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble and Unilever. Strategy Magazine has called him “one of North America’s leading visionaries.” Mitch built his career by working directly inside the waves of change that reshaped modern business. He founded and built a digital marketing agency that worked with some of the world’s largest brands and was later acquired by WPP, where he served as President of a firm operating in 25 countries with almost 3,000 employees. Mitch is the bestselling author of Six Pixels of Separation and CTRL ALT Delete, and the host of Thinking With Mitch Joel, one of the longest-running business podcasts in the world. His writing and commentary appear in outlets including Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and Inc. Magazine. He is a member of Dr. Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches and was named to the Thinkers50 Radar. Mitch also hosts Groove – The No Treble Podcast, documenting the oral history of electric bass players. Mitch is also Co-Founder of ThinkersOne, a platform that enables companies to bring personalized thought leadership from world-class experts into meetings, events and off-sites in focused 15-minute bursts.