Social Media and Quality Management

My comment on Quality Trends in Uncommon Places: "However, my personal view on the future of quality will be focused on New Industry - Social Media"

I would not agree with this statement.  I agree social media is important.  But it is one aspect.  I expect quality management to continue to be focused on continual improvement, respect for people, systems thinking, customer focus, understanding variation, etc.

I think it is important for companies to use social media well.  And have it be people interested in the business not just flashy cool stuff.  I wrote Red Bull asking where to buy their product and never even got a response.  They spend millions on generating buzz - ignoring direct customer requests is foolish.

Quite a few companies provide better support if you Tweet them than in any other way.  I find it odd they don't do the other options better (phone, email, in person...) but they do at least respond to tweets (they seem to have put a team in place and told them to provide good customer service via Twitter - which is nice, but why didn't they fix their other customer avenues?).  That is another example why I think saying social media will be the key is wrong - it is good to use social media but you need to make customer focus your organizations focus - not social media your orgs focus.

I think, building your personal career brand is important.  I think a blog is the most important way to do so.  Personal web site, Twitter, Google+ etc. (links to mine) are also good.  I personally don't use Facebook.


Reddit is a great social media site (that many managers don't seem to be aware of).  Here is a collection of (sub-reedits) focus on management.  Reddit provide links to online resources ranked by votes of participant in focus topics.