Recently, a friend of mine has approached me with a few queries in regards to the social media strategy that his company was planning on implementing. The corporation is in the business of designing software for {telephone| businesses, and while I won't bring up the name of the corporation out of politeness, I will tell you this; they had a lot to learn about their social media profit formula.
Their plan was to make an organization blog to engage their clients, and add usefulness to their website. Which is usually a fairly good start; a blog works very well for both of those things. However, the corporation was very paranoid that their competition would start to take ideas from them due to whatever information was transmitted through the site and decided that each article had to be accepted through the president of the corporation before it could get posted. The other problem was how the website content could not discuss any of the company's services or products, once more since they were afraid that their competition would take their ideas. But, they had made their blog. Thats a lot more than most businesses had been doing.
Regrettably, the blog was doomed on the road to failure. Despite the fact that they did want to start blogging, and had plans to develop a complimentary presence on Twitter, the blog content would only be visible to visitors who were already customers of the company. Which begs the question, what were they planning to tweet about?. Since each reader of the site has to become a client first so that they can access the articles, what is the purpose of alerting the Twittersphere about latest posts, or bringing people back to the blog to start a discussion, if only the people youve already sold to can get into it? How do you think you're going to entice comsumers into a conversation of your services if you cannot talk about your products? Lastly, if its a private blog, why are you so concerned in regards to the competition gaining access to it?
In essence, this company is hopping on the Social Media bandwagon without thinking it through. Maybe they do suffer a sound security worry, when that is the argument then a channel that's all in regards to the distribution of information and concepts almost certainly isn't the best match for them. I've been running a blog on behalf of this small flower shop here in Houston for a little more than a year, if I were required to convey the single main lesson I've learned while doing it, it might be this; "the greater you communicate, the more you get back". Where businesses like this flop at Social Media is leaping in head first devoid of taking some time to grow a strategy that complements their firm. Without taking a honest look at your online business, then developing a Social Media strategy that works for it, it'll be akin to attempting to explain to men how women feel. An exercise in uselessness.
Their plan was to make an organization blog to engage their clients, and add usefulness to their website. Which is usually a fairly good start; a blog works very well for both of those things. However, the corporation was very paranoid that their competition would start to take ideas from them due to whatever information was transmitted through the site and decided that each article had to be accepted through the president of the corporation before it could get posted. The other problem was how the website content could not discuss any of the company's services or products, once more since they were afraid that their competition would take their ideas. But, they had made their blog. Thats a lot more than most businesses had been doing.
Regrettably, the blog was doomed on the road to failure. Despite the fact that they did want to start blogging, and had plans to develop a complimentary presence on Twitter, the blog content would only be visible to visitors who were already customers of the company. Which begs the question, what were they planning to tweet about?. Since each reader of the site has to become a client first so that they can access the articles, what is the purpose of alerting the Twittersphere about latest posts, or bringing people back to the blog to start a discussion, if only the people youve already sold to can get into it? How do you think you're going to entice comsumers into a conversation of your services if you cannot talk about your products? Lastly, if its a private blog, why are you so concerned in regards to the competition gaining access to it?
In essence, this company is hopping on the Social Media bandwagon without thinking it through. Maybe they do suffer a sound security worry, when that is the argument then a channel that's all in regards to the distribution of information and concepts almost certainly isn't the best match for them. I've been running a blog on behalf of this small flower shop here in Houston for a little more than a year, if I were required to convey the single main lesson I've learned while doing it, it might be this; "the greater you communicate, the more you get back". Where businesses like this flop at Social Media is leaping in head first devoid of taking some time to grow a strategy that complements their firm. Without taking a honest look at your online business, then developing a Social Media strategy that works for it, it'll be akin to attempting to explain to men how women feel. An exercise in uselessness.
