Get Over Yourself

This weekend I saw “Social Network” (the movie) and knocked around a small artisan town. The two combined reminded me of a lesson as old as Dale Carnegie’s guide to friendship and how it might apply to marketing via Facebook. Here it is: to realize the potential of Facebook focus on other people and learn to listen.

Never mind sorting out fact from fiction. The movie is filled with lessons about doing life with others. Whether or not he has friends, Zuckerberg’s genius alone was not enough to propel his idea. Others inspired (albeit sometimes unwittingly) and connected him to the other people and resources to move his work along. The portrayal of Zuckerberg makes him out to be a self-centered, smart aleck know-it-all. However, I tend to sympathize with the notion of a guy who was so focused on an idea that he looked past the people in his life. Ironically, nothing really could have happened without those people and eventually about 499,999,990 or so more.

But life need not imitate art when art is all around in life. A fall day in Leiper’s Fork, TN was full of inspiration. An outdoor lunch at an all natural restaurant, live music, an art coop walk through and impromptu visit with an artisan tenant set all of my creative senses on fire. Info receptors were opened. Then an open-ended question posed to a local shopkeeper presented a lesson for marketers who use social media/networking.

She shared the origins of the community name including an anecdote about a gun duel featuring Andrew Jackson. She put founders’ names and personalities to the local boutiques. And later she pointed down the street to where a world renowned musician lives. I had valuable (even if for entertainment purposes only) new insight because the focus was on her and what she knew about the subject at hand. We were connected.

It reminded me of a lesson from Dale Carnegie’s book “How to Win Friends and Influence People”: people like to talk about themselves. There isn’t a single tech innovation that will ever change that. So as marketers we have to create moments that enable sharing and listening. At Bigfish, we call them interactions.

So how does the weekend translate to a lesson for businesses who market via Facebook? Two simple things:

1. Admit that you need other people to succeed.
2. Create interactions where you talk less and listen more.

Or if you'd prefer just one: get over yourself.

Want to be heard? Find me at www.twitter.com/timbigfish