Photo by Achew

Most marketers claim that social media is for EVERYONE.  I’m going to have to disagree.

What compels someone to do 2 hours of research for 1 blog post?  What motivated someone to reach out to bloggers, Twitter users, and to comment on Facebook fan pages in addition to all of the other business tasks that he or she needs to do?  Why would someone want to associate his or her brand with the company and speak to people on the company’s behalf.

People do it because they’re passionate about their work.  If you love your company/job, then you’re going to go above and beyond what is expected of you and the people you interact with will notice this.

The waitress who loves her job

We’ve all experienced a waitress/waiter who absolutely loves his or her job.  She carries a smile on her face when speaking to you, she has the menu memorized, and is always attentive to your needs. This great experience will compel you to keep coming back to the restaurant just to be served by that waitress again.

Now, you can say that it was just great training from the restaurant, but I believe it’s something way more than that.  The waitress who goes above and beyond for you is passionate about what she does.

Similarly, if you work for a water bottle company, then you will go above and beyond to write interesting blog posts and interact with people in water forums or on Twitter because you absolutely love your job.

What if you’re not passionate about your job?

Social media is about building relationships with people.  If you don’t love what you do, then you will not feel motivated to interact with people on behalf of your company or to write creative blog posts that showoff your company’s culture.  If you don’t care about your company, then why should you write about the company culture?

—

Most companies don’t want to put the effort into social media, which is why they hire consultants.  Though I commend companies for realizing that they need to find a way to leverage social media, I feel that a consultant’s role is NOT to take over the social media presence of a company.

The consultant’s role is to develop a plan of action that the company should use to build a brand, gain fans and followers, and communicate effectively with the people that matter.  The consultant cannot speak on the company’s behalf; the person that must do this is the person within the company that is passionate about what the company does.

Tags: passion