inderSTADTBala Gopalan's noWHere in the *CITY

Note: Following has been re-blogged from my own post on the bHive Blog.

Last month, some of the bHive core team went on a weekend hike up White Mountain Peak (wiMp, 14,252ft) in INYO National Forest. The third highest peak in California, it is both fair weather and friendly… only insofar as you do not take it for granted. Boy, were there simple lessons learned from this day hike? Certainly, and all are as applicable to practicing Web Presence Management (WPM) as they are to life!

All Sugar and No Salt is as fatal to your Customer as it is to the Hiker
By some miscalculation, we all carried and snacked only on sugary stuff on our uphill hike. Big mistake. The idea was to ease our way to the top on “power” snacks, eat one of those ready-to-cook “real” hiker meals and cruise on the downhill hike. Not only did our systems reject the sugar even before we reached the top, but there also was not one tiny sheltered spot for us to light our backcountry stove. The terrain was barren and winds howling. In hindsight, a few saltines, nachos or even junk food like chips/crisps snacked periodically would have helped a lot.

What’s the parallel here to WPM? Corporate communications are like sugar. Customers, like your system, will reject it to the point of fatality if that’s the only diet they are fed. However, a contextual Social Media (SoMe) practice will keep your Customers trusting and engaged, just like the right pinch of salt snacked periodically keeps the system healthy and balanced. In salt, we trust (in just the right doses, of course)!

“Done that Altitude” is PAST, “Must Do Attitude” is PRESENT
Our hiking team has had its moments. Latitudes stretched, longitudes tested. And, some record altitudes attained, all in good health. All, however, in the past still did not adjust our attitude, what’s a wiMp by any other other name?

What indifference! Continue to be stuck in the past on the only ways you have talked to Customers, taking them for granted, and rest assured the wiMps will become IMPs – InsurMountable Peaks (or, Problems). What worked then is past. What must be done today is to engage in each uphill task with full transparency and deference (or, empathy). Always respect the Mountain, high or low. We need to Listen and Learn from our Customers – and give them a Voice — daily … today, everyday!

The Curious Case of Turtle Tao
We met a septuagenarian on our climb. He was on a solo road trip from Colorado to hike in Utah and California. Let’s call this gent Turtle Tao. He was ahead of us in the morning when we were driving from the campground to get started on the hike. He was driving slow-and-steady on the single-lane dirt road. Needless to say, us can’t-wait-to-calculate-return-on-investment-(ROI) types “forced” him to yield so that we could get there sooner. We started the hike much ahead of Tao. Surely enough, he caught up with us within the hour! He gave us company for the next 1-2 hours and then moved slowly ahead even as he seemed to accelerate without increasing his speed – walking or breathing. Finally, when we reached the summit Tao was there, again pleasantly inquiring after us. Offered me a sandwich bite and did take some summit pictures for our ROI. We lost sight of Tao shortly thereafter in our downhill delirium. He was the proverbial Tortoise, seemingly slow but surely steady and earnest. We were the insolent hares…already at the finish line with ROIs and dashboards!

There seems to be this raging, current fixation on SoMe ROI. Hopefully, we all do not forget that the main goal of Social Media (and WPM in general) is the trusted ongoing engagement it facilitates. Not the arrival at any specific end points or summits. To twist a famous traveling quote: “the point of this WPM journey is not to arrive.” Instead, the engagement and participation it enables are to be enjoyed, to be learned from, and ultimately… to be continued.

###

Here is a short slideshow from this hike: