For me, it’s not which matters more: what people say or what they do? For me, it matters that’s there integrity between what people say and what they do.

I think the congruence / alignment of speech and action is a really important measure, especially in the transparent world in which we now live.

Speech, action and behavior need to be aligned.

Thanks,
David

It is a great question. Certainly, most people would agree that actions speak louder than words, as the saying goes.

The powerful thing about the social web is that the medium itself records actions as well as words. This is very different from traditional/mass media where it contains only messages. The actions are not visible or recorded in the medium itself.

Whether we realize it or not, in social media, we use the recorded actions as queues to help interpret the words all the time. For example, everyone is familiar with the United Airlines brand crisis around Dave Carroll’s video “United Breaks Guitars”. But what made this a story? Was it the words or the actions? Would CNN have covered the story if the video only had three comments and 35 views? I doubt it. Yes, the content was important, but CNN covered the story because the video had over 1 million views and thousands of comments (it has ~6.4 million views now). So the actions or “deeds” became the real story: the fact that everyone jumped in to add their support, share the story, etc. Why did this happen? Well, because Dave Carroll stuck a chord that everyone resonated with – the deeds, in this case, tell the real story.

That’s why it is just as important for a brand to monitor the social metrics, the “deeds” of the social web, as it is to monitor the words.

I love the quote at the end!

Cheers,
Marcel
CEO, Radian6