Accountability Through Social Media
One aspect of social media that I really like is the accountability of it all. If you give someone a line of BS or just have a general lack of integrity in your marketing, people will call you on it…and it will ripple through hundreds or even thousands of people. I think that’s fantastic. I think it’s great that if you lie, you’ll pay. In my CWNP days, I used to do road shows with various vendors. My typical opening line was, “all vendors lie.” :) What a sad state of affairs, no?
My favorite thing that ever happened because of that statement was with a really good guy named Kamal Anand (Meru Networks). After I gave my spiel, Kamal stood up to give his presentation and started with, “you should take everything I say with a grain of salt because I’m with a vendor…and like Devin said, all vendors lie.” The crowd roared and ate it up. I thought to myself, “this guy is brilliant.” He understood the natural mistrust of vendors as much as I did, and he planned to keep his presentation within that context. His presentation was an excellent one, and to this day, it reminds me of how important it is to simply tell the truth…for better or worse.
