The bumper on my car popped out of alignment a few weeks ago. While nothing major, driving around in Los Angeles since then has been pretty interesting… and, yes, ties in to social media.
Twice since the misalignment, I’ve had cars pull up beside me at a stoplight and someone inside roll down their window to tell me my bumper’s off… and to offer to fix it for me at their body shop/garage/wherever.
Three times in parking lots, I’ve had folks start conversations with me and then make the same repair offer – their shop, their cousin’s shop, right there in the parking lot for cash.
The stoplight encounters remind me of people who send you their link out of the blue when you mention a specific topic in a blog post, Tweet, or Facebook update. They might actually do the repair well, but I know nothing about them and, in a way, the approach feels intrusive.
The conversations that turned to sales pitches were a bit more like folks who, for example, follow you on Twitter and then, when you follow back, send you a DM with a sales pitch. It’s feigned interest, and it rubs me the wrong way.
In the end, I didn’t search the list of the half-gazillion body shops in LA, nor did I look at any ads. Instead, I learned of a shop from a trusted source who’d had a good experience and brought my car in. And had I not known of that shop, I would’ve asked my trusted friends on FB and Twitter for recommendations for the same effect.
It’s not just for car repairs that I work this way, either, of course. Book and music decisions, restaurant choices, and so much more come from recommendations. Ads still bring awareness, it’s true, but now with our expanded, social media networks, we can get recommendations on a broad array of products and services in a way we couldn’t before.
This change has ramifications for companies big and small, and also authors, illustrators, and artists of all sorts. Unless, of course, you listen to strangers who drive up next to you and shout out recommendations!
Do you make choices based on ads or personal recommendations? And how have you developed trusted sources? I’m always curious….
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Thanks for this post, Greg.
I’m in complete agreement with you. In this age of social media, I still have “in-person” networks I rely on (friends who do extensive research before they use service people) and local community-specific (alumni parents of my son’s elementary school, for example) listserves that attempt to refer from within the group when at all possible.
I think the financial climate has intensified the value of what you’re discussing…Not that any of us cared to waste money before, but we are even more aware now of the benefit of giving a good worker and good person a job if we can.
The other memory your post recalls for me is a tape we used to listen to when my son was young – MR. BACH COMES TO CALL ( Lavut, Babiak & the Toronto Boys Choir). Whether Bach actually said this or not, I don’t know, but in the story, he talks about never “bragging” about his work, that his work will say all that has to be said.
You put to words what I have been observing lately. In the “hype” to increase the number of followers in Twitter, I have had all those encounters. I even replied to a DM naively thinking it was genuine only to get the same DM the next day. So the disappointment was my teacher. In the end, like you I will ask trusted ppl that I have met either personally, or thru social networking. I do enjoy your posts very much Greg, thank you
Going with trusted sources is always the way to go. I find the pushy folks rarely live up to the hype
Carol – I agree that the financial climate has made trusted sources even more valuable and more often used. Taking chances when money’s tighter… or even when that’s the perception… is a bigger risk that most of us don’t want to take. And yes, Jemi, there is that “hype” vs. what we know issue tied in.
And Stella – we’ve all learned from disappointment at one point or another in social media (and beyond)! Comes with the territory, I think.