If you happen to be a boomer or even at the tail end of that generation, it’s likely that you may be nostalgic for the good old days. You know, those old days when relationships were still highly valued in business. Remember when your parents went to secure a mortgage?

They met with a bank manager who knew them and the relationship with that manager had bearing on them getting their loan. The manager didn’t just scan credit scores and punch numbers into a computer.

At some point we got away from that.

We turned over simple common sense, sound judgment and plain old gut instinct to faceless credit score companies and we devalued relationships. We decided that a computer credit score card beat who and what people are and what they mean to us. We took it a step further and we commoditized relationships, gave them arbitrary values based more on cold computed formulas, rather than simple humanity. We tried to tack a value on to everything and everyone. In so doing we forgot to value the most important thing of all, relationships.

Fast forward to a new millennium and we have the rise of social media. A channel which if it accomplishes nothing else, may well teach a new generation of business people that relationships do indeed matter and commoditizing them is simply something you should not do. The worst possible way to approach social marketing right now is to try and monetize it immediately. A company which attempts to make money from social media directly at this point is at best, in for disappointment and at worst, disaster.

For business social media is about 3 basic things:

• Engagement: Finding the people who are interested in what you have to offer and telling them more about it. Consider it as you would a casual introduction with some value added.
• Relationship building: Good engagement leads to relationships. Sure, no one is going to be your brands best buddy, but when there are two identical products on the shelf side by side at the same price and they have a relationship with one, but not the other; I’d say it’s clear which has the advantage.
• Brand building: Getting your name into the social stream by offering relevant, compelling and useful content builds brand image.
   

Expecting someone to always be a “best best friend” with you and your brand just because you interacted via Twitter or Facebook is naïve. However, discounting the power of engaging and building a positive image via social is so as well.

You shouldn’t over value the power of social media marketing, but you’d have to be blind not to appreciate its potential. Social media is a channel that lends itself well to that old fashioned idea of having a quality relationship with a customer and demonstrating in every single interaction how you value it even above the sale. While many may see social as a technology which is pushing business to think in new ways, the bigger challenge for business is in remembering the old ways.