TechWag

Image by TonZ via FlickrI was at a presentation last night where I was talking to a group of Chinese business people about incorporating social media into their culture. How Chinese business can use social media to their own advancement using JetBlue, Comcast, Google and Beth Kanter as my examples on how to reach an audience regardless of the business they are in. Using the airlines, cable, a technical firm and non-profit made a lot of sense, show how it is done across a broad swath of industries and the commonalities between all four of them.

I’ll put the presentation up presently, probably in a month so you can all see it. But some things really struck my attention when I was giving the presentation. First there was a translator, and if you have ever given your presentation while working with a translator that is an interesting experience. The second was that I put the slide show up for the Chinese business people in simplified Chinese while I worked from an English language version. That seemed to really grab their attention, they had something they could hold on to, and read while waiting for me and the translator to work out what to say. There was one other issue that really caught my attention.

The Chinese business people paid attention to what I was saying, and wanted more case studies tailored to their specific industries. They were excited, enthusiastic, and you could see them thinking on how to do this and bring it back to their companies. They wanted to do this, they are going to do this, and they are going to do their best to start on social media when they get back. Many wanted to keep in touch.

Here is why they will win – they want it, they see the immediate benefit to them, and they were working out how to do it during and after the presentation.

Over the last year I have talked to over 100 startups, and each time I ask them what their social media is going to look like. They have a blog that is updated monthly, or they rely on the standard Techcrunch article to get them going, but after that, they really don’t know where they want to go with it. Most companies do not survive the initial enthusiasm for their product. One of my favorite examples of a company that didn’t get social media and keeping buzz going is CUIL.

CUIL, and a huge number of Seattle startups do not get this graph, they know it is bad, but they have no plan on working out how to fix it. They understand their product, but they don’t understand their audience. They don’t understand social media; they don’t use it, and many of those 100 Seattle startups I have talked to have no social media plan.

When I have live blogged at MIT Venture Lab locally, people think that this is PFM, they love it, but they don’t know why they love it. They want to do it, but they don’t know why they want to do it. It is not even on their radar.

This is one of the reasons that the Chinese are going to continue to win, they were attentive and engaged, they immediately saw the value of social media, and were working out plans on how to do this before the presentation was over. They had great questions at the end of the presentation, good deep meaningful questions that indicated that they were going to go do this the minute they got back home. On the flip side, people know they want it, but are not quantifying why they want it, they know they need to do something, but what that is, they don’t know.

This is what is going to make the next 18 months so very interesting for small companies; social media must be second only behind the product. The reason that it needs to be there rather than not even on the radar is that people want to engage, they want to be able to talk to someone, or they want to follow along with the product if they are a fanboy or fangirl. The Chinese get it, American’s need to get this concept too.

Tags: Chinese, business, social media, social, media, cuil, fail, win, audience, engage