Starting from understanding
Posted: Mon Feb 17, 2025 10:36 am
What's your story?
In this mix of resources, social media seem to be a new marketing channel for many organizations where news and commercial messages can be pushed. It seems to be a new means to build up a considerable reach in a relatively simple way and to profile yourself as an organization. However, what story do you bring out as an organization, what is your message?
Simon Sinek talks about how inspiring leaders or companies communicate from faith and a clear conviction, instead of from a product level. Sinek distinguishes three different levels, the so-called 'golden circle', or three rings actually. The outermost one is about 'What', every organization knows what it does or what it makes. The middle one is about 'How', how they make those products, or provide certain services. The bulls eye knows the question 'Why'. Where many companies now communicate with 'what' ('We have bananas, come and buy them!'), they should communicate with Why. To illustrate: many organizations claim that they sell bananas instead of believing that fruit is healthy and leads to a healthier life. Eating a banana is one of the translations, and what many organizations call a unique selling point . This, while they should actually communicate about the why.
Sustainable tweeting
Making a profit is not the answer to the question Why, the answer says something about the purpose of an organization, what it contributes or why it finds certain activities important. A question that fits in with the spirit of the times in which organizations are forced to become more transparent and want to do business sustainably and socially responsible. A good answer to the question why is sustainable. Sustainable also in the sense that a customer who believes in the same 'Why' as the organization is a customer for life. Someone who is interested in a banana is your customer once, perhaps a few times. Someone who can convince you that fruit is healthy, on the other hand, is a customer for life and also comes by for apples, pears, strawberries.
Back to the real world, I see that many organizations communicate at the What level. In my field, I read a lot from colleagues about Twitter workshops, workshops to become a social media expert, LinkedIn optimization processes, but often less about conviction and the why. That is a shame, because organizations are introduced to social media in the wrong way. On the one hand, I understand that Twitter workshops are hot right now, after all, they are discussed in the election results, so that appeals. However, it often leaves organizations with a 'Great, thanks, and now?' feeling.
The approach is wrong in my opinion. I believe that every organization has the potential to grow via the internet, and benefits from the connection that it can make with customers, employees or interested parties via social media. But to be able to participate well in the new digital world, a thorough understanding of this world is necessary. Unfortunately, organizations are too quick to seize social media as a goal, and not as one of the possibilities to really connect with your environment and develop from that connection. Growth then comes naturally.
Gaining understanding should always be the starting point for an organization to be able to form a good answer to the Why question and later to give substance to the How and the What. A Twitter workshop is a clear What case, or a case estonia phone number list of How . I also like to explain to organizations how you can retweet messages, but that says nothing about the belief or greater goal that you have as an organization with the use of Twitter, for example, and the shared understanding of, among other things, new media that you must have for that. A conclusive answer to the Why question enables organizations to make connections instead of just making them, and will also help them find the ROI that everyone is so desperately looking for. Acquiring a new follower by tweeting a nice YouTube video is quickly done, but making them believe in the added value of your services is a different matter.
As a starting point, social media are still used too little strategically based on the belief that they really connect with the stakeholders of an organization, based on the belief that they can obtain feedback in the market to improve their own services, or to improve cooperation with others.
Organizations need to understand how the nature of social media enables us to connect and thereby facilitates in creating value from that connection, but that the connection itself is not a goal. When that starting point of using social media is, we can set out together and connect organization and environment. When we all start from a clear belief or clear goal, you will automatically arrive at How ; how to do that and What , with what to do that. That Twitter workshop will then come automatically. As long as you tweet from Why and as long as you tweet from your conviction or what you believe in.
In this mix of resources, social media seem to be a new marketing channel for many organizations where news and commercial messages can be pushed. It seems to be a new means to build up a considerable reach in a relatively simple way and to profile yourself as an organization. However, what story do you bring out as an organization, what is your message?
Simon Sinek talks about how inspiring leaders or companies communicate from faith and a clear conviction, instead of from a product level. Sinek distinguishes three different levels, the so-called 'golden circle', or three rings actually. The outermost one is about 'What', every organization knows what it does or what it makes. The middle one is about 'How', how they make those products, or provide certain services. The bulls eye knows the question 'Why'. Where many companies now communicate with 'what' ('We have bananas, come and buy them!'), they should communicate with Why. To illustrate: many organizations claim that they sell bananas instead of believing that fruit is healthy and leads to a healthier life. Eating a banana is one of the translations, and what many organizations call a unique selling point . This, while they should actually communicate about the why.
Sustainable tweeting
Making a profit is not the answer to the question Why, the answer says something about the purpose of an organization, what it contributes or why it finds certain activities important. A question that fits in with the spirit of the times in which organizations are forced to become more transparent and want to do business sustainably and socially responsible. A good answer to the question why is sustainable. Sustainable also in the sense that a customer who believes in the same 'Why' as the organization is a customer for life. Someone who is interested in a banana is your customer once, perhaps a few times. Someone who can convince you that fruit is healthy, on the other hand, is a customer for life and also comes by for apples, pears, strawberries.
Back to the real world, I see that many organizations communicate at the What level. In my field, I read a lot from colleagues about Twitter workshops, workshops to become a social media expert, LinkedIn optimization processes, but often less about conviction and the why. That is a shame, because organizations are introduced to social media in the wrong way. On the one hand, I understand that Twitter workshops are hot right now, after all, they are discussed in the election results, so that appeals. However, it often leaves organizations with a 'Great, thanks, and now?' feeling.
The approach is wrong in my opinion. I believe that every organization has the potential to grow via the internet, and benefits from the connection that it can make with customers, employees or interested parties via social media. But to be able to participate well in the new digital world, a thorough understanding of this world is necessary. Unfortunately, organizations are too quick to seize social media as a goal, and not as one of the possibilities to really connect with your environment and develop from that connection. Growth then comes naturally.
Gaining understanding should always be the starting point for an organization to be able to form a good answer to the Why question and later to give substance to the How and the What. A Twitter workshop is a clear What case, or a case estonia phone number list of How . I also like to explain to organizations how you can retweet messages, but that says nothing about the belief or greater goal that you have as an organization with the use of Twitter, for example, and the shared understanding of, among other things, new media that you must have for that. A conclusive answer to the Why question enables organizations to make connections instead of just making them, and will also help them find the ROI that everyone is so desperately looking for. Acquiring a new follower by tweeting a nice YouTube video is quickly done, but making them believe in the added value of your services is a different matter.
As a starting point, social media are still used too little strategically based on the belief that they really connect with the stakeholders of an organization, based on the belief that they can obtain feedback in the market to improve their own services, or to improve cooperation with others.
Organizations need to understand how the nature of social media enables us to connect and thereby facilitates in creating value from that connection, but that the connection itself is not a goal. When that starting point of using social media is, we can set out together and connect organization and environment. When we all start from a clear belief or clear goal, you will automatically arrive at How ; how to do that and What , with what to do that. That Twitter workshop will then come automatically. As long as you tweet from Why and as long as you tweet from your conviction or what you believe in.