Eggblogg

An example of why social media shouldn't be outsourced

I was recently followed on Twitter by an acccount claiming to be a social media agency, whose tweetstream consists entirely of brags and ads. 

You know the sort of thing: XYZ client tells us how great we are, outsource your social media to us, we're the greatest, etc. Some of the ads were promos for their clients. Many tweets were repeated every week or so, with the wording just slightly changed (sometimes). I went back six months and the pattern was the same. Nothing of information, nothing helpful, no RTs, no real conversation.

This is a good example of poor practice. If you're not sure why, feel free to check out my post at Social Media Today on "10 ways I plan to become a better Twitter user".

Why should this bother me? Because, although there are plenty of Twitter accounts of this kind, they are not generally run by people who claim to know about social media. And who presumably (because they advocate 'outsourcing') run their clients' accounts in the same way. 

It's a bit like the early days of search engine optimisation (SEO) when companies sprang up, making all kinds of promises to small businesses. This usually involved the SEO company creating and hosting hundreds of doorway pages on the client's behalf (amongst other things). Did they deliver great results? Short term, sometimes yes. Long term, the company was liable to be penalised by Google for using black hat techniques, and when the client left them the SEO firm would simply pull the pages - end of rankings.

Don't get me wrong, SEO can be outsourced very effectively - it's increasingly complex and specialised. but social media is different altogether. Companies must do it themselves - perhaps in conjunction with consultancy & training, and/or account co-management. The ideal to aim for is for 'social' to permeate every pore of the client company. But until this is better understood there will always be those with a little bit of knowledge prepared to jump on the social media expert bandwagon and try making money from it.

Social media activities need to be sustainable in-house and owned by an organisation's people. It is not an add-on and it is not 'just another marketing channel'. Hand it over to a third party at your peril.

Company Christmas cards - traditional, electronic or none at all?

If you are a B2B business, do you send traditional Christmas cards to customers and partners, or opt for an electronic alternative? Or send none at all?

A few years ago I went through a stage of sending e-cards, (although always created in HTML in the body of the email, no Flash, attachments or the need to follow a link to view the card on the web.) The card included a greeting and 'thank you for your support/business' message, and a note to say that I made a donation to charity in lieu of buying and posting actual cards.

But I went off the idea after a couple of years. Perhaps it was the fact that e-cards had become so common, I suspected that people no longer opened them. Or that I started to feel that as my client/suppliers/partners list wasn't huge, it really wasn't too much trouble to send an actual, handwritten card, and it was a nice way to make personal contact with people I've worked for for years but rarely see face-to-face. 

It's now that time of year again and I'm being regaled with various e-cards ranging from the simple & fun 'big fat merry christmas thank you' variety to the the sightly take-it-or-leave-it 'I'm not sending cards this year but here's the charity I'm donating to if you're interested' type of message.

Much as I applaud the charity angle, as an alternative to sending Christmas cards I tend to feel it's been done. Why not adopt a charity and support it in small ways, year-round, and send a few personal Christmas card 'thank yous' once a year in your own handwriting, one person to another? It just feels a little warmer, particularly in a recession. For me it will probably mean missing out some work acquaintances (it's easier to add a ton of contacts to an e-card list than to write everyone a card, agreed) but  hey - I can't see anyone being that offended at not making the cut. (Others feel more strongly about alternatives to corporate 'holiday' cards - here's Chris Brogan's post on it.)

Do you agree? Are you an e-card or a traditional card sender, a bit of both or none at all?

Social media usage at work: get used to it

My eye was drawn recently to a piece in the FSB (Federation of Small Businesses) magazine 'The Voice'. Under the heading 'A Cyber Plan for Businesses' is a report on the 'comprehensive guidance' from ACAS designed to help business 'get to grips with the cyber problem.' In it we are told that 'many staff are abusing access (to social media) when they should be working, by looking at personal websites, posting derogatory messages about managers and colleagues or buying and selling online.'

My heart sinks when I read this, not only because of the language ('cyber problem'??) but because it's this kind of thinking that IS the problem.

If staff are bored enough at work to be on Facebook or Ebay all day, or posting derogatory things about co-workers, what does that say about the workplace? It's all too easy to blame the internet rather than asking searching questions about poor management and staff morale!

It's time for ACAS, and other bodies with responsibility for shaping policy and opinion, to wake up and smell the social coffee. Social media is here to stay and trying to stop people from doing anything social online whilst at work is entirely counterproductive.

Businesses should be identifying the best social networkers, encouraging them and harnessing their skills and interest to work on behalf of the business. It's not an easy option but it beats trying to hold back the tide. And there are enough examples around to emulate. Let's get with the 21st century already!

 

Social media = evolution, not revolution

When I talk to small business owners there's something that often comes up as soon as the phrase 'social media' is used. It's a sense of bewilderment or even alienation. Sometimes even if the company is embracing new ways of communicating with customers it's tinged with resignation: "you have to be doing this stuff now."

Plenty is written about social media being a 'revolution', but revolutions are generally short, sharp and bloody. It feels more like we're in the middle of an evolution, a natural, long-term change being brought about by a mix of factors: technological, cultural, economic and social.

If business owners can think of it this way, as a series of small, almost imperceptible steps, it might be more manageable. When faced with a barrage of stuff that tells them 'you have to do things differently' I can see why so many are wary, and some stick with the 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' school of business.

Michael Brito talks about the 'evolution' of business towards 'social business' in this piece, arguing that it involves change across an organisation, but the payback is value creation. I like the idea of this being an evolution, not least of all because it takes the emphasis off of the minutiae of 'social media marketing' and onto holistic changes in how business is done.

Time for a story

Plenty of interesting food for thought in this quarter's edition of Market Leader. I particularly liked Simon Glynn's look at the role of storytelling being 'at the core of building tomorrow's brands.' 

Marketing theory has boxed itself into such a rarified corner that it hardly impacts on the majority of business owners, but the idea of storytelling interests me because I think it is relevant not just to big brands but to small businesses.

Glynn differentiates between the more successful 'brand legends', based on truth and customer experience, retold by customers, and 'brand myths' - great stories, but invented and therefore less likely to draw an emotional response from people. And it's this emotional response that counts, because that's why people retell the story and in so doing build up an attachment that some might call 'brand loyalty.'

My main take from all this is that we all love good stories, and if they're based on something real, that we've experienced, they are both more memorable and more likely to form one of the threads that can bind us together - not just to the brand in question but also to others who feel the same way. Worth thinking about when we're contemplating or going about engaging audiences and building community on the social web.

As Glynn sums up in his article, 'digital conversation tactics won't work without a 'worth-being-talked-about' strategy.'