Planning for the best

maggiefox, May 4 2007

I’ve just been catching up on some reading, and came across this great piece by Jeremiah Owyang. Like so much of what he writes, this particular phrase really struck me,

Be sure to plan for positive unexpected events. If a customer raves about your product on his blog, learn how to acknowledge and harness. [emphasis mine]

We spend so much time planning for the worst – do we spend enough time planning for the best?

As part of our methodology, we plan for the worst because we know if we allow negative events to run unchecked, they tend to get larger and worse. Conversely, the same is true of positive events – they often get bigger and better all by themselves, but thinking about how to harness that buzz energy and leverage it to the max is an important part of any social media strategy.