Social Media and Thought Leadership

By Rob Discher, Vice President, Crisis and Consumer, Edelman Austin

"An actor’s a guy who if you ain’t talkin’ about him, ain’t listening."
-Marlon Brando

Our fair Hill Country hamlet here in Central Texas has been under siege for the past two weeks as throngs of movie makers, musicians and digital savants have paraded through Austin. The coffee shops are packed, the bars busting that seams, the average pants appearing a bit tighter and blacker than they usually do even in our hipster-friendly village. 

As celebrities pile into town, the glitz and glamor makes its annual return and, I’ll admit, it’s easy to get caught up in the “knowledge of the now”.  Eleven months out of the year we write off celebrity wisdom as lightweight fare, but something struck me about this old school Brando quote and how it relates to Edelman’s work bridging our corporate, consumer and digital practices. It hits on a key facet of thought leadership that we too often overlook – the value of listening and engaging.

Thought leadership is a somewhat ambiguous term, but at its core, there’s the basic concept of changing hearts and minds. Moving people from one place – physically, mentally, emotionally – to another in a manner that leaves a clear mark for whoever did it. Underlying that effort, however, is the need to listen and customize content to your audience. You need to get to know them. The expectations now, with social media part of our everyday lives, is that companies won’t take a blanket approach. They’ll respond to your questions, fix complaints lobbied into the ether of Twitter or Facebook about their product or service.

This is where we find a beautiful connection between social media and leadership. If you’re not really paying attention to your audience, and if you’re not generating content that speaks directly to their best intentions, egos and aspirations, you’re never going to move them anywhere. Ten years ago we leaned on focus groups and staff brainstorming sessions to figure out what our target audience wanted. We spent a lot of money and caffeinated hours coming up with what eventually became an educated guess. This guesswork informed executive speeches, marketing campaigns, advertising and product delivery.

Social media turned that on its head. Now, when we want to monitor an issue, we do it in real time, over an extended period, and we measure the impact we’re having in quantifiable ways.

Listening gives us the license to lead. Doing this over time and with intelligent tools gives us the opportunity to track changes in the conversation, find new ways to participate in it, and change our messages or delivery mechanism accordingly. Social lets us talk directly to people in the language that they’re already using. It gives our campaigns…our realtime interactions…personality and responsiveness. It opens up companies to lead not by decree or manifesto, but through genuine human interaction – at scale.