International Business Networking
International business and cross-cultural communication university professors have been sharing my blog with their students for some time now. I see this by monitoring the statistics on my blog.
A few of these university professors embrace social media and also connect with me on Twitter and Facebook. And it’s fun when they ask me to join in on their classes using Twitter.
Many of the students are awkward and don’t know how to create meaningful conversations with me. They stick to stilted requests for the information they need. But some students get it and engage with me on social media with conversations that truly interest both of us. Some students even create cross-cultural communication blogs to review my blog as part of their homework assignments.
It’s great to see students move out of the student role into real social media networking because we are usually passionate about the same topics and they become fun connections on social media. Unfortunately these students usually come and go very rapidly.
Homework Assignement Cop Out
I also regularly get requests from students to help them complete their homework. Most of these requests would take me at least a good half hour to respond to.
You can read more about why I don’t respond to requests to do homework assignments but essentially I just don’t have the time to do this. Besides, this blog is not about doing university assignments, it’s where I share the experience I have after over 25 years in international business.
New Trend In Requests From Students
Most of the requests I get from students are on this blog’s subject: cross-cultural skills in today’s media for international business development. But what’s interesting is that I’ve been getting a different type of request recently. This time students are asking me to help them with university assignments on social media.
Now this might corresponds to my involvement with Social Media Examiner and it’s rapid rise to popularity, but I’ve also noticed the online chatter about well-known universities now starting social media programs.
Social Media Survey
I’d like to share with you a survey I received recently from a university student who said her professor had asked all students to contact bloggers with these questions.
- How does social media change advertising for businesses? I don’t think of social media as advertising. It’s more like business networking to me. Yes, businesses can do some advertising on social media. But Facebook ads and paid tweets represent a small minority of the social media tactics.
- Do companies benefit more by advertising through social media? Why, or why not? I wouldn’t know. I don’t use social media for advertising. Social media does improve your visibility online, but this is a vast topic and you’d need to fine tune your question to keep this answer reasonable.
- How have social media changed in the past five years? It would be easier to answer this question, if you asked “how has social media changed in the last year“. There have been too many changes for me to want to answer this in a short survey.
- Can you predict the way social media will change in the next ten years? We can barely predict how social media will be in a year’s time, 10 years is a bit too far into the future.
- How have social media empowered consumers, and given them a voice? Well, I think people have always had the voice on social media.
- How does social media change the way people now communicate? Again this seems a funny question to me. I’m not a scholar and haven’t done any research… but I do think social media came about because communication changed fundamentally a while back. Even if some people haven’t yet connected the dots to understand this, it’s not the other way round.
- Has social media become overly addicting? Why or why not? Again, this is a question someone who is new to social media would ask. Very rapidly when you use social media on a regular basis, other questions take the lead, such as personal productivity and focus.
- Do social media change consumers’ purchasing decisions? Why or why not? Of course. People are influenced by what their friends say and recommend. Social media is social.
- Twitter grew a lot faster than expected. Why is Twitter beneficial and effective? Again it’s about networking and Twitter is real-time networking.
- Can you predict that social media will always be free like most of it is now? Why or why not? As I said, I don’t think anyone knows with reasonable certitude what’s in store for social media in the future.
- What are some disadvantages of social media? You need to jump in and actually use it for a while to understand what’s really happening. If the person who wrote these questions had actually used social media, theses questions would be very different.
- What are the main advantages of social media? Being closer in tune with society today.
- Is LinkedIn the best social network to communicate professionally? Why or why not? How does LinkedIn help consumers find jobs? LinkedIn is a place for job hunters to meet potential employers, and vice-versa. Plus it’s predominately North American in culture. So it’s good for people who fall into those categories.
Now although this student asked for detailed answers by Thursday, I’m sure you can see why this is impossible even if I was in the business of helping out university students.
Improving Questions To Get A Response With Meaning
First of all, it’s very easy to see by the questions that the neither the professor nor the student know anything about social media or why businesses should use it. This survey will not give any good results about social media.
What’s interesting is that to correct this survey you need a few of the important skills you also use in international business networking.
- Prior research is essential to get the questions right. These are not the right questions to send to a blogger.
- Don’t make assumptions. This survey starts off by assuming bloggers use social media as advertising. The survey also associates consumers with LinkedIn which is not accurate. There are several wrong assumptions here that make these questions irrelevant.
When you know you don’t have enough information to ask the right questions, start off simple and spend time first to scope out the main areas of your topic.
This might mean taking action in two or three steps to learn enough before you know which questions are the right ones to ask. And it takes a bit more work than blasting off an email.
In fact, it also means you’ll need to create in-person connections if you want to actually get the valuable information you need.
So, if the student who sent me this survey reads this, what should she do?
- Start by reviewing the my blog and revising the list of questions
- Leave a short question or two in the comments here, but step back and ask basic questions on the topic
- Tell me about yourself, where you’re from, what you are studying, why and what you actually like about the questions you want answers to… but only in a couple of short sentences
- Avoid wide open ended questions that need a book to answer them
- And avoid writing a mini saga about yourself
- Say hello on Twitter
- Give a shout out on Facebook
- Continue the conversation and let it ping pong back and forth a bit to create some sort of a connection
Above all, stop being the student in a constant stream of anonymous cookie-cutter requests more suited to the last century and start being a real person who is interesting to talk to. It’s better networking. You’ll end up getting much more information this way and you’ll also start understanding what social media is about.
What about you?
- As a blogger, have you noticed an increase in questions from social media students?
- What would you recommend social media students do to learn more about how social media impacts business?
- Do you think email is still a good tool to use for surveys?
Please leave your comments below.
More on International Business Networking:
- Social Media Student Asks Wrong Questions
- 2 Habits To Grow Your International Network
- The Biggest Mistake In International Networking
- Follow Up With Your First International Clients
- Online Business Networking When Cultural Communication Styles Clash
She is who I turn to when I have questions and you should too"
-- Chris Garrett, co-author of the "Problogger" book
