If you have to deal with the manager of a specific business, does it really matter who he (or she of course – but I’ll stick with “he” this time) is? He might be a nice guy, have all kinds of good friends or contacts – post tonnes of personal pictures. Do you care? What matters to you, is whether he can help you.
We have taken the concept of Social Media in business and made it too personal. Almost, sounds strange to say it, but I guess the thing with business, is that once a person is no longer in a particular role we see him differently. Basically, business relationships are role-centric.
I wonder if we would find business-oriented social media sites more useful if they started focusing on the role of people rather than their names. Search for owner or general manger in LinkedIn and what do you get? A mishmash of results sorted by name not the role or the places.
In business, what matters is who can help me get something done. The interesting thing is that the “who” is about what he does and where he does it, not who he is personally. That’s secondary!
Some Social Media food for thought, what do you think?
By: Jose Leal
I think you are on to something in that "professional" based social media sites like linkedin can increase their value proposition by leveraging the "what we do" more.
Having said that, even business is driven by relationships. What you do may drive somebody to action or introduction... but who you are and how you interact with each other will still largely affect how much (if any) business you do with each other.
Posted by: Phil Barrett | July 19, 2008 at 11:56 AM
Thanks for your comment Phil. You’re right, who you are matters greatly in business. My point though, was not that “who you are” doesn’t matter, but that from a business perspective “what you do” matters more.
Posted by: Jose Leal | July 20, 2008 at 06:13 PM