What I Learned From My Favorite TV Show JUSTIFIED

The season two finale of the FX show "Justified" reminded me of a very important lesson for all of us in business.

Near the end of this episode the hero, U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens (Timothy Olyphant), drives up to the home of the bad guys. At that moment I noticed that the driver's side of his car had a huge dent.

At first I was startled. Then I remembered that a couple of episodes ago, while driving, he was rammed by some other bad guys gunning to kill him.

Aha, I thought. Someone paid attention to this small detail and realized that Raylan had been too busy since then to take his car to the body shop. He needed to still be driving his car with the huge dent.

Then I thought: Attention to detail. That's so important in business.

Here is one example of the opposite of attention to detail:

Someone followed me on Twitter so I checked out the person's Twitter bio. The bio was what I would call obnoxious – stating that if you were "too lazy" to create your own Facebook Page this person's company would do it for you.

Too lazy? Creating an effective Facebook Page now usually requires technical skills as well as marketing skills. And I wondered how many people responded to this obnoxious bio.

To get a feel for the reception this bio was getting, I checked out the number of people this Twitter account was following compared to the number of people following the account. Huge discrepancy. There were very few people following the account compared to how many people the account was following.

In other words, this inattention to detail – the way you say something in a 160-character maximum Twitter bio – can make a big difference in the reception received by your Twitter profile.

Although a Twitter bio is very short, it is NOT an unimportant detail. In fact, it is a very important detail to which this person should have paid attention. The person could have pitched the Facebook Page service without insulting potential customers.

In the press of daily business, it is easy to overlook the little things. And this is especially true when we don't have someone, as on a TV series, assigned to check for continuity in what we're doing.

But to the extent that you can, do pay attention to the details. It's often the littlest things that can influence how someone perceives our company. And we want that perception to be positive both online and offline.

© 2011 Miller Mosaic LLC

Phyllis Zimbler Miller (@ZimblerMiller on Twitter) is the co-founder of the social media marketing company Miller Mosaic LLC.

Get the free information "8 Social Media Marketing Mistakes" and "Social Media Marketing Does Not Magically Work; You Have to Work It" at www.facebook.com/millermosaicsocialmedia