It’s Not about You, It’s about Your Customers
There is a story that Ken Olsen, former CEO of Digital Equipment, once said that he saw “no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home”. Although many thought that this quote was an urban legend (alligators in the sewers of Manhattan comes to mind) he did say it at the 1977 meeting of the World Future Society in Boston. This quote was picked up by Time magazine, and Mr. Olsen spent some effort backpedalling when he was criticized for the remark.
Digital’s CEO could be forgiven in 1977, but I knew nothing of his past remarks when – in the mid 1980’s he spoke at the Electronic Mail Association – and I heard him say the same thing. By this time the IBM PC, the Apple and even DEC’s Rainbow were consumer products, and some enterprising individuals were using modems to access CompuServe and MCI Mail!
This long-forgotten remark by the CEO of a major company prompts me to urge other CEOs not to dismiss social media. At this point, you may not personally be able to envision how it can be used to grow your company. You may not understand the motivations of those who engage heavily in social media. You may not even realize that you benefitted from someone’s initiative in the social media space when you read their review of that book on Amazon or that new electronic toy you wanted to purchase.
However, it is no longer enough to understand your customers’ needs; you need to understand how they are communicating and who they are listening to. Think of the social media as the biggest “media buy” you can make. The reach is farther and more persistent than the primetime ad space. The 2009 Super Bowl had about 90 million views and FaceBook has 200 million active members and 100 million of them log on each day.
Engaging in social media comes at a much smaller price tag than a 1- minute Super Bowl commercial; however, it asks a lot more of you and your company than just money. It requires that you think of your customer as partners. I know that we are all used to thinking of customers as those people to whom we launch new products and don’t want them messing with our smart new ideas and our timetables. But customers are partners with some real benefits. They can help us with product development and take a lot of the expensive trial and error out of the process, help other customers with support issues at a cost smaller than even the best outsourcing deal can provide and even get us new customers with no commissions required. And this is not just talk about alligators in the sewers of Manhattan.
