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Over the last half year or so I immersed myself in social media. Read a lot of stuff. Tried to weed out the self proclaimed gurus from the people who really know what they are talking about. And of course I dabbled in social media myself. I learned a lot and I would like to say that my learning curve has been very steep. Going up that is.
I needed to read up because when working for TNT Post as an interim manager on employer branding and job marketing we didn't use social media at all. Sounds like blasphemy, but thousands of people needed to be hired, while it looked like thousands of employees would lose their job. Strikes and labor unions were part of daily life back then and social media had been abused by disgruntled employees before so it was a no go back then. However, in the mean time the Communication Department strategized on how to deal with social media. They came up with some excellent guidelines that I blogged about last December.
So I was held back. Or so it felt. When awake from this "social media" less period of my life - I didn't even have time to write my blog back then - I realized that lots of organizations, professionals (even friends in the same line of work as I) don't use any form of social media. It reminded me of a friend who 13 years ago was working in food FMCG and proclaimed that the internet was of no use for his business. He was the commercial director and he was wrong. It still boggles my mind that people who work in branding, marketing or communication aren't on LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook. You don't have to be fanatic about it, but how do you know how it works or what it can do, if you do not use it? And if you don't use it how can you give the best advice possible to colleagues or clients?
Or course there are people who say that social media isn't for everyone or every organization. I beg to differ. I think social media has an impact on the organization and its brand(s).
It is very simple really. If branding is all about the image in the heads of the consumer, you have to listen to what they are saying about you. And they using social media to say it. So social media is not an option. You don't get to chose if you're in or out. It is mandatory. Your (potential) customers are out there talking about you and you should listen. It is the least you can do.
If your organizations is like most organizations it has employees. They use social media too and may say good or bad things about your organization. With service providers employees have always been creating moments of truth. Every interaction with customers is a moment of truth. The emergence of social media confronts other types of organizations with this phenomenon as well. Listening, and clear and simple guidelines would be a minimum involvement in social media for an organization with employees.
Businesses exist because they sell stuff. Person to person sales has taken on a whole new dimension with social media. Cold calling has been replaced by smart calling. That is, if you use social media to your advantage. And why wouldn''t you? I have never met anyone who likes cold calling. Nor have I ever met anywone who likes to be "cold called".
It is a challenge to figure out how to best use these media to your advantage. But you really have no choice in "if" you should use them. It influences your organization and your brand whether you use it or not.
To explore this topic I started the group The Social Brand on LinkedIn. Why don't you join me there?
Although I have had a Twitter account for quite some time, I only really started using it about 3 months ago. As it is good usance to review after 100 days I thought I'd share my thoughts on using Twitter. Not that the world is waiting for another self-proclaimed social networking guru, but I just want to share and check my thoughts with others.
I found that I see Twitter as an extension of my working environment. It is how I act in the workplace in real life. I share knowledge and go looking for new insights. If I don't understand something I'll ask. If I do not agree I'll question and be my usual critical self (it is a gift you know). I also found I do not want to be all work and no play. So I utter things I would around the water cooler or coffee vending machine. Or have the small conversations I would have with people I meet on the go, at the trainstation or in the elevator. I like those short dialogs with people. I like the feeling that just for a short time I found a kindred spirit, or gained a new insight by an unexpected view of a virtual stranger. I like meeting new people and I like feeling connected.
But just as in real life there are things I do not like or get about people on Twitter. I do not get following zillions of people. The other day I started following someone who I thought to be interesting. He has more than 300.000 followers and to give him credit, he was also following a 300.000+ people back. But I wonder how you engage with so many people. There is no way to follow so many people and have time to do anything else worthwhile in your day to day life. I ended up unfollowing the person.
Also it seems to me that a lot of people use Twitter in an oldfashioned "one-to-many communication" kind of way. They use Twitter to broadcast and send out their messages. If they are real pros about it they automate, repeat and schedule their messages. There is in principal nothing wrong with all of these things but at times I feel like I am listening to the ongoing repetitive SOS signal on the island in Lost. To me it doesn't feel very sincere and the lifecycle of these messages are very short. Eventually I end up unfollowing those kind of people because they only advertise. They aren't sharing, they aren't opening up for dialogue, they never initiate dialogue.
I mostly use Twitter to learn and share about professional topics. I tend to follow people who do the same thing. Sometimes however people do not live up to my expectations. My bad, as they are my expectations. Having said that though I just don't get the "I woke up", "I had a coffee", "I arrived at the office" kinda updates. Who cares? It boggles my mind that those people actually have followers. I must admit that in one particular case I waited around for some big revelations, but they never came. So after 10 strikes, I unfollowed.
Sometimes I find messages undecipherable. It happens with messages that have lots of @'s, #'s and http's in them. I am not sure if it is just me but I find that my brain simply rejects them. My brain will command my eyes not to read them. Someone will probably do or is doing a study into the effectiveness of the 140 character message, but I am betting that all those at-signs, hashtags and URL's in one tweet add to the ineffectiveness of messages.
All in all I really like Twitter as a tool to meet, share and engage. I try to add a bit of myself to the mix in the process. I liked doing the #FF FollowFriday recommendations. But with the brain shutdown at the sight of too many @'s and wanting to be sincere in my recommendations I started limiting the number of #FF's. So now I #FF 4 people every friday and motivate why I think other people should follow them too. It sparks dialogue, which I enjoy.
Want to share your thoughts on Twitter?
Yesterday I blogged about things I didn't get about social networking. One of the things I didn't get is following 50.000+ people on Twitter. It may look like you're hip and happening, but how is it social? How much interaction is there really possible?
Then I noticed that this particular person send out a lot of tweets; 75 in the last 23 hours to be precise. Woah! Information overload, I say!
I am sure that in this networked times new rules apply, but does that mean that old rules do not apply anymore at all? In an "old world" we wouldn't dream over imposing such an overload of messages. Why is that now acceptable? I don't find it acceptable. It is too much. Way too much. And tiresome...
So who can shed a light on this for me? Please enlighten me.
