In an interview with Tom Asacker on his new book Success Made Simple: An Inside Look at Why Amish Businesses Thrive, Eric Wesner makes mention of the dichotomy between efficiency and effectiveness in relation to technology and its impact on relationships.  It brought to mind what we hear so often nowadays, that a company is now ‘doing’ social.  

Have we forgotten that before doing social we were social?Can a business that is not social be effective in the social space? What quality of relationships would such a business have with its clients? While some businesses need less face to face (FTF) time than others, I believe some effort needs to be made to maintain effective relationships, not just efficient ones. Making ‘house calls’ on your customers may not be viable anymore because of the geographical constraints that may exist but a phone call, a Twitter message or even an email just for them would go a long way to building effective relationships.

For instance, my bank is a social one.  I think it is because the staff ask after me, my family, the state of my business and once in a while how a certain current event is affecting our sales.  I feel that they are keen on building a real relationship with me.  My previous bank had no such culture. It was more of the slam-bam-thankYouSir kind.  If my current bank establishes an outpost on one of the social media networks and continues to do what they do offline there, they would be great.  However, if my former (impersonal cold distant) bank, which has even invested in Relationship Managers,  attempted the same thing they would come across as unauthentic and insincere.

In short, the decision to ‘do social’ is a flawed one from the start because social business don’t have to ‘do’ it. They ARE it.

Don’t go out today to ‘do friendly’. Go out and be a friend.