The Heart of the Matter

On June 13th, Don Henley played the Budweiser stage in Toronto. Printed on the tickets and signage throughout the venue was that photos and videos were prohibited. That seemed a bit 1995 to the rest of the forty, fifty, sixty-something crowd and I, but it was Don Henley, after all, and who are we to judge?

As soon as Don took the stage, fans disregarded all the prohibitions and began videotaping and snapping photos—present company included. The security staff played a game of whack-a-mole all evening trying to stop it, but only with limited success.

It got me thinking about why the promoters failed to realize that trying to limit photography in 2017 was a losing battle and why, instead, they did not use the social media to their advantage.

Your workplace, business, and organization are the same. In this social media world, you are not going to prevent employees, disgruntled customers, or your competition from using social media. So why not turn it around and use social media interactions to your advantage?

One of the most important things you can do on social media is to observe. Monitoring what people say allows you to truly understand the risks (and benefits) that social media poses for your organization.

You do not have to be a trending tweeter to use this philosophy. All you need is a fairly rudimentary understanding of the key platforms—Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat. From there, you need to monitor what is being said about you and who is saying it.

Once you know those things, you can take the appropriate steps—and there are many depending on the situation and its seriousness—to address the problem.

In the meantime, do a Twitter search for #donhenley to see exactly how unsuccessful the concert rules were. Hint: you will see a good one @gordstrat.

Original Article: http://www.afimacglobal.com/kgordon/2017/06/20/the-heart-of-the-matter/