Social CRM and the Death Eaters? Lord Voldemort lives!

Couldn’t resist the title or the tie-in given the the events of my day. Someone was asking me about the SCRM Summit that is taking place and I noted that I was not invited and knew nothing of the details of the summit. The dialog took place in the warm confines of twitter, where everything you say is kept private, of course.

Not long after I was honored by the arrival of a message from a newly created Twitter account, none other than Tom Riddle, aka Lord Voldemort from Harry Potter fame. The Dark Lord kept the message simple:

“JohnFMoore [not invited to summit] If you spent more time listening, and less time talking, you might not have missed it #scrm”

True… My response:

“TomR_CRM Wow, harsh. Always love it when someone lacks courage to speak for themselves and have to hide behind false identities #scrm”

The lessons for all of us are simple:

– Principles like transparency, open dialog, and relationship building are not always welcome. There ae always those tha only buy into these principles when the discussion matche their viewpoint.
– You will, in your efforts to “go social”, encounter plenty of people who disagree, and yes, dislike, your message. If you are a company or a government agency you must have a strategy for how you deal with this disagreement. Some choose to simply ignore, I generally choose to respond to reach a middle ground.
– If you blog, tweet, or in any way participate in social communities, understand that there are those that will agree with your message, and those that will not. Stick to your message and deal with the occasional negative reaction. In the end, the rewards of participation are always higher. See you out there.

John