On a Sunday afternoon, I was woken up by sudden sound of a notification message. “Pls read and comment on my article published in ABC Mail today” by a professional friend who also happened to be CEO of a company. He never bothered to share learnings from that article.
During a casual chat one day one of my close friends mentioned that he ‘likes’ Joseph Rai’s (name changed for the article) comments occasionally because Joseph liked his’ often. Ok!
This happened. I liked artisan chocolates made by one of my friends looking for selling at his online store. The chocolates were really tasty and they offered variety of mood tastes. I was about to praise him for the good job when he sent a message “Pls like our page, put review and make comments”. I never could. I didn’t have time. A genuine ‘like’ never went to my friend.
I hadn’t been on Instagram until now. A time came when I genuinely felt an urge to have a platform to share small snippets in small stories. Instagram seemed fitting. I never invited any of my other social media contacts to know of my presence since I wanted to see genuine ‘likes’ and be reciprocated likewise. My posts have begun to be liked by random accounts (sometimes totally irrelevant) from where not. It may be premature to mention but my account loses at least 1 or 2 followers if I don’t post anything in a week! I don’t care because their posts couldn’t get me to follow them anyways.
One of my very competent team member who had worked with me in early days sent me a message lately. “Dimple could you kindly write a Linkedin ‘recommendation’ for me? I knew she deserved my notes since I managed her directly and somehow she was a great team member. What left me scratch my head though was the fact that she needed Linkedin to endorse her professional authenticity despite being one of the best professionals anyways! I am still thinking how could I help her without seeing her handicapped by a Linkedin note. It may take little longer but I know my action would be a true help when required. Waiting for the right time to come.
I happen to be a media professional who manages brand building and governs brand spends. My clients have begun to set campaign objectives of ‘likes’ and ‘followers’ and ‘comments’ etc! Oftentimes these mandates are so isolated that they barely fetch any conclusive long term effect. In the absence of any integrated measures other than isolated social media numbers, my clients forget to use rational common sense that ostensibly can give greater understanding on consumers. Solution is known but actions are demurred! Their management systems don’t allow them to put rational explanation beyond plain numbers. Their bosses don’t have time to consider details. Reliance on shabby numbers grows uncontrollably!
“Tathastu” (So be it)
Afterwords:
Individually, these situations are similar to that of citizens who happen to throw garbage on already filthy lanes. They don’t think it would improve conditions if they don’t throw garbage there; the lanes are anyways dirty. However, they remain so UNAWARE that if they throw garbage on existing lot, they’re growing it too! Problem is GROWING garbage and not ONE-TIME garbage. One-time garbage can be removed very easily.
Thinking about global order (visualizing cleaner street) AT THE COST OF local order (of self-correcting own negative habit)!
Epilogue:
It’s important to assess own daily professional actions and ensure that we are neither throwing nor growing our personal garbage!! Important, even more, if we are working higher up the ladder!
