Peering Into Your Emotional and Social "Why?" With Social Media

Whitney Johnson wrote a compelling piece about using the Jobs-to-be-done framework to "hire" social media. The article explains how she hires social media to get certain jobs done for her, like finding new business opportunities, or connecting with disparate networks.

Here's the kicker:

If you hire social media, especially to promote your business, you will likely have your own reasons, but ask yourself the question, "What problem am I trying to solve?" This will likely get you to the functional element. To peer into your emotional and social why, also ask "what progress am I trying to make?"

The savvy social media user knows that social media is not just about chatting with people and just keeping up with friends and their networks.

Brands use it to the turn the brands conversation inside out, to be less institutionally led and more consumer-focused and to practice the "consumer-listening" mode, to find out what stories social and expository customers tell about the products they love.

And there is a more compelling and emotional story to it, too.

Johnson worked with Re-Wired Group's Bob Moesta to write this article, and she points out his vision for the Jobs framework:

Moesta, the "milkshake guy" referred to by Clayton Christensen, examines the forces that drive people to purchase new products and services. After decades of applied research, he's concluded that jobs are primarily about identifying the natural "pull" (or demand) rather than reacting to the traditional "push" of sales and marketing information. Key to understanding the jobs that your products do for you is real behavior: not what you say, but what you do. By examining the basic push and pull forces in people's lives, he parses out why people do or don't hire a product, and what's hindering or furthering their progress.

Consumer choices always have a why element to them, and using social media as a brand's listening tool and conversation tool is a great way to understand the unspoken whys. Those whys are bundled around emotional reasons for choosing.

Take a look at Johnson's viewpoints on how people hire social media in the HBR article, .

Related articles

• What Job Does Social Media Do For You? (blogs.hbr.org)
• Social Media is about people (mallorywood.wordpress.com)