Fueling procrastination and workaholism
Personal effects aside, when it comes to business and networking, social media has advantages. Mike Wilson, MBA ’06, is CEO and founder of digital marketing firm Wavelength Media in Kansas City, Mo. His firm manages clients’ social networks to help them achieve their goals, whether it’s building a brand or getting the word out about a product or service.
Wilson inevitably finds himself compared to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. He’s the same age. He’s a computer whiz. He’s a successful entrepreneur under the age of 30. And he’s irrepressibly positive about how great Facebook is, especially for businesses. “With social media, a business can create a network of customers and generate community in a way it never could in person,” Wilson says. “It enables a much more personal connection than was ever possible previously.”
In fact, Wilson considers the line between personal and professional to be blurry or even nonexistent in social media. He makes no distinction between his personal and professional personas online. “I’ve found that when I’m friends on Facebook with my clients, the face to face interaction becomes more personal,” he says.
Wilson does, however, maintain tight control of his profile. If his contacts post something he believes might hinder his professional reputation, he asks them to remove it. He keeps his privacy options dialed down. And he encourages others to be proactive with their own accounts. “Everyone should go to Facebook and change their settings so their profile is not searchable by Google,” he says. “Facebook is for people who know you, not for strangers to check you out because they found you on Google.”
Like Donovan, Wilson has seen many people become addicted to social media—it’s an easy way to fill time when you’re avoiding an unpleasant task. But he doesn’t blame social networking sites for this phenomenon. “Before it was social media it was texting, and before that it was email, and before that it was standing around the water cooler,” he says. “There’s always going to be something to blame for our inability to pay attention to the task at hand in a sustained way.”
But one thing social media does do in an unprecedented way is fuel workaholism, especially via a mobile platform. “Our society sees someone who works 40 hours a week as lazy,” he says. “But if someone is completely frazzled and exhausted from working 80 hours a week, society respects that. It’s sick, but it’s true. And social media lets you stay engaged with your business 24 hours a day. I’m guilty of that.”
Even though he’s an advocate for social media, Wilson admits there’s no substitute for face to face interaction in certain situations. One is selling, which Wilson insists requires a direct, personal, face-to-face relationship with the customer. In fact, he believes this so strongly that he’s done no online marketing for Wavelength Media: no Google adwords, no banner ads, nothing but a website (albeit a very handsome one). “All our business comes through word-of-mouth and face-to-face meetings,” Wilson says. He simply uses social media to reinforce that relationship. Recently, he attended a philanthropic event and walked away with more business contacts than if he’d spent a month on marketing.
The best way to generate new business may be face to face, but what’s better when it comes to snagging a date: online or face-to-face interaction? Dating websites like Match.com and eHarmony have become hugely popular for people wanting to increase their social interactions. According to Hitwise.com, online dating sites had 593 million visits in October 2011. Of the 54 million singles in the U.S., about 5.5 million use dating websites. Wilson, who met his wife on eHarmony, could be a spokesperson for online dating. But he maintains that the relationship has to be built in analog. “You’ve got to talk on the phone and see each other in person,” he says. “Once I’d reached ‘open communication’ with my wife on eHarmony, I called her and met her as soon as possible. We went out on dates. You can’t date online.”