By Nilesh Bhagat, CHRP

There’s a theory I came across in one of my social psychology classes that says we define ourselves according to the groups we belong to. It’s a strong driver of our behavior and I think it holds reliably true. Think about how you define yourself. You likely would include your gender; your family status; your role at work; or perhaps a fan of your favorite team – all descriptions of the various groups you belong to at any one time.

In my opinion, this idea of social identity is the driving force behind what makes Facebook so successful. The people you are connected to on Facebook have helped to define you in some way – they’re your schoolmates, colleagues, family and bests. It’s also a great reason why organizations would try to get you to ‘like’ their pages – if you pledge your allegiance to them (by clicking ‘like’…), you’re showing that you believe they somehow represent a part of you. In addition, our internal drive to remain consistent with our behaviors means that when you ‘like’ a business, you do so for reasons justified. In this context, that justification is that these companies somehow represent us.

Here lies the Facebook paradox for businesses: it’s a potentially great tool for engagement, but does it engage at the level for which it was intended?

Facebook was originally meant to be a platform for connecting with friends. A business isn’t your friend (traditionally speaking). You can’t call them up to talk when you’ve had a bad day. You can’t go grab a seat at the pub to watch the Canucks game with your favorite store. As a result, it becomes much harder for organizations to engage with their audiences through Facebook and share the level of connection the platform was initially created for. Sure, I like companies all the time, but many times I’ll turn around and ‘remove all posts from my feed’ – not exactly an engaged fan, if you ask me…  In contrast, I’m genuinely interested and engaged with my friends because I share a level of connection with them that I just can’t with an organization.

There’s a shift going on that might work to the advantage of those organizations hoping to engage customers via Facebook. David Pink, in his book Drive, describes the move of the organization from ‘profit maximizers’ to ‘purpose maximizers’.  Organizations are no longer shadowy entities out to grab your money. The new business is open and transparent; it shares and is connected on various platforms with its stakeholders. This shift to an entity which genuinely cares for the well-being of its stakeholders means that we might be more likely relate ourselves to the modern business on a level of self-definition. While you still won’t be able to share a meal with your favorite company, you can feel safe in knowing you share the same genuine values – underlying ingredients to any healthy relationship.

This might be enough to strengthen the effect of engagement tools, like Facebook (and soon Google+), creating a mutual benefit for both consumer and business. Clearly engagement via social media is an issue in and around organizations of all types, but companies moving from ‘profit maximization’ to ‘purpose maximization’ may find life much easier as they try to connect.

The goal of any organization wishing to engage via Facebook (or any social media platform) should then be to act on purpose, not on profit.

That’s something we can all begin to ‘like’.

Nilesh Bhagat, CHRP, is the membership and CHRP administrator at BC HRMA. After several gruelling years in school, Nilesh graduated in October 2010 from Simon Fraser University with a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration, First Class Honours. He majored in Human Resources Management and tacked on an extended minor in Psychology. He’s a self-confessed nerd (the first step is admitting), likes to read, loves hockey and is struggling with the complexities of learning the game of golf.