Introduction
In ‘Social Conversation – Six Key Areas of Influence‘ we identified Robert Cialdini’s six areas of influence that affect the behavior of others. The fifth of these was ‘consistency’ and, in terms of the Societal Web, consistency requires us to be scrupulously consistent across all of the platforms on which we work.
You can destroy it in a moment
Imagine for a second that you are seeking a new job with a major insurance company in the UK. The Directors of the business have been impressed by your CV and are thinking about interviewing you and they run a quick search across most of the social media sites on which they know you are likely to be present.
- On Ecademy, they find you a keen and open businessman sharing business knowledge and demonstrating your skills and experience well.
- On LinkedIn, your CV is consistent with everything they’ve read on your paper CV and from the recruitment agency that sent you.
- On Facebook, they find a link to some pictures on Flickr that show you being ill after a night of drinking in Central London.
- On Twitter they hear you chatting about a company you worked for and were sacked from, the sacking isn’t mentioned elsewhere.
If they don’t ask you for interview will you ever know that that caused the problem? Perhaps not. Perhaps it shouldn’t cause an issue, or perhaps it should.
If it does cause an issue, it’s because the images and story that it tells of you as an individual is inconsistent with those other areas, unless of course you’ve ensured that they are consistent and covered in all of those sites as well. This is not to say that you shouldn’t enjoy socialising with your friends and a drink or two, nor that you should be ashamed of sharing those things with others. But above all else, being who you are in all of the places in which you are found is critical if you’re to be seen as consistent.
It’s inevitable there will be inconsistencies; it’s inevitable for example that your political views will become apparent if you’re engaged in social conversation across many sites, it’s inevitable because if you hold political views it would be inconsistent to suppress them.
If you write about being a family-focused individual and show lots of photographs of you having golfing holidays or skiing holidays with the lads from the golf club, then that too portrays an inconsistency unless there are also images and conversations about the holidays, the presents, the time spent at the weekends, the love and attention to others in your family that you claim to be important to you.
Consistency is hard work, unless…
Being consistent is only hard work if you’re seeking to portray many personas. Portray yourself everywhere in a consistent way and it becomes easier. Seeking to portray different views of yourself across different places is much harder.
So, I’m consistent, so what?
Consistency means that those who run across you know what to expect when they meet you. Consistency means that our likely response can be anticipated, consistency means that we influence others’ behaviour as they think through the issues that affect both of us. The influence extends beyond the conversations we have because they are able to anticipate our wishes, thoughts, needs and desires. Our influence is instilled in the consistency we give in the frameworks we’ve described to those that we care about. In the Societal web, when you tie that consistency into the ways you work in your business you make you and your business Socially Cohesive.
As a closing example, giving children a consistent framework in which to operate enables them to make their own decisions about choosing whether to do their homework or watch the television, whichever they choose our consistency enables them to understand what we would have preferred for them and our likely reaction when we understand the choice they made.
They still have the freedom to choose, but we influence the choice whether we’re actually around or not. In my experience, where parents provide the greatest consistency of love and attention and frameworks in which to make choices, the children have the greatest understanding of the consequences of the choices that they make. In business, the same applies between business friends, associates, partners, shareholders, investors and so on.
In the long run, consistency is one of the greatest influences that can be applied on the Societal Web where meeting face-to-face may be either impossible or unlikely.
