Linked In News @ Online Internet Web Network

A couple years ago, I still read “tweets” (that is what a lot of so-called social media gurus call blog posts posted at twitter.com). Back then, one of my favorite authors @ twitter.com was Adam Kmiec.

After I stopped paying attention to twitter.com, I also lost sight of Adam Kmiec — maybe that’s a big mistake (yet even if it is: I’m not really sure who is “responsible” for it ). Adam works in a different “field” than I do, but I do enjoy his perspective on things — I feel much of it coincides with my own… so perhaps it’s just as well I also pay attention to other sources, rather than simply wallowing in “echo chambers” that simply give me a “good feeling” about my own perspective.

Adam Kmiec was mentioned on a recent “For Immediate Release” podcast (I regularly listen to this podcast, because I feel that Shel and Neville have their finger on the pulse of so-called “social media” — and while I do not pay much attention to something that apparently cannot even be defined [as Malcolm Gladwell conceded to me in a chat about one of his New Yorker articles on the topic], I do understand that there are a lot of people who pay attention to whatever they think it might be, and Shel and Neville do a very good job at condensing all of the hot air in this space into the droplets they include in their weekly podcast [note, BTW, that I often feel OK with listening to this podcast quite a long time after it is published, because Shel and Neville are so on top of news, that they have it long before it makes its way into mainstream media]).

They mentioned it was about something of a spat between two companies — Walgreens and “Express Scripts”, and that Walgreens had chosen to terminate the business relationship they had with Express Scripts.

Well, so like a regular moron, I keyed “Walgreens” into the search box at Google — and found basically nothing. So I added “Express Scripts” (in quotes) — I got some more, but I still wasn’t satisfied. Most important: I discovered that the top 100 results did not include any commentary from walgreens.com (I would expect Walgreens to make a statement about terminating a cooperation related to something on the order of $4 billion in revenues — as Shel and Neville had mentioned). So I gave up on Google and went to walgreens.com.

Again, I didn’t find anything — at least not directly on the homepage or via some company news link I clicked on. So I decided to use the walgreens search engine — BING: That was a hit!!

The result was a site called www.ichoosewalgreens.com — and this made it quite easy for me to understand the issue “at a glance”. Basically, it boils down to these 2 points:

• Express Scripts insisted on being able to unilaterally define contract terms, including what does and does not constitute a brand and generic drug, which would have denied Walgreens the predictability necessary to reliably plan its business operations going forward.

• Express Scripts rejected Walgreens request to be informed in advance if Express Scripts intended to add or transfer a prescription drug plan to a different Express Scripts pharmacy network, and to provide patients with equal access to Walgreens retail pharmacies. Walgreens cannot reliably plan business operations without clear terms, transparency and predictability governing the provider network relationship.

Shel and Neville were concerned about the way so-called “social media” fanatics were responding to the way the topic was being covered in blogs. I find Adam Kmiec has very good advice on this:

[L]et’s break this down, because this is an important concept for any person in a leadership capacity to understand:

1. Don’t make decisions on what AdAge, the New York Times, Seth Godin or any person/company/publication will think, unless your strategy is focused on making sure you earn their praise, support, etc. Their job is to cover the story and your job is to trust your insights and gut.

2. Never use anecdotal feedback as a proxy for real data. It’s not a good substitute and can lead you astray.

3. Remember insights lead to strategy and strategy leads to the plan. If your insights are solid and strategy grounded in those insights the plan rarely fails.

4. Understand your audience. Similar to #1, you need to know who you’re trying to reach and what message you’re trying to deliver. In this case, the people were trying to reach don’t read Ad Age, Social Commerce Today or David’s blog. Heck, they don’t read my blog.

In my opinion, when I write something I make a contribution. If someone else is willing to defray some of the costs involved to enable me to write, then of course that would also make me happy. Yet if readers expect a free lunch, then they should probably not expect fine cuisine.

I still have no idea why people pay attention to twitter.com or google.com — maybe they just have nothing better to do with their time?