UnSelling: The New Customer Experience

Chapter 58Passive versus Active Exposure

Remember back in Chapter 21 when I told you about the York Police department's Twitter account and how much we adore them? The police use Twitter to reply to community concerns and questions and share relevant information about safety and law enforcement. They use Twitter to be part of their community, because their community is using Twitter. They do the work of engagement and are present online, as they are on Toronto streets.

For them, Twitter isn't a campaign. It isn't a way to show off their good work. Their exposure online is passive; they do what they do, and the community speaks for them. I sure do.

The key to social according to UnSelling is to work toward passive versus active exposure. This means we want to create experiences worth sharing, rather than sharing our experiences for ourselves. Active exposure is the push, where businesses and organizations go on Twitter and other platforms and send out their messages using social media like a modern-day, 24-hour-a-day/seven-day-a-week press release where they control the message. Active exposure can also mean trying to control the conversation through sponsored hashtags and Twitter events. Remember the good old days when you could craft a marketing campaign and send it out, controlling the images people would see of, and about, your brand? Well, on social media that kind of active exposure just doesn't work.

As a counterpoint to the social success of the Toronto and other police ...