Over the first weekend in February I traveled to Nashville to attend the "Blissdom 2009 blogging conference" I signed on for this for a couple reasons, I write two blogs and I'm a veracious social media fan. Be it myspace or Facebook you'll find me on almost the entire time I'm at home. I recently added Twitter to my arsenal of ways to stay connected to my friends, family, and those amazing folks who live inside the computer and who I've never met!! I knew that Twitter was a big deal, but I had no idea how much of a big deal Twitter really was until I saw over 200+ women all on twitter tweeting about the conference in real time. With that image in mind, imagine applying this to business! Your customers contact you, you know their needs, you know their wants...heck you know what they had for lunch! That is how our world is changing.
You might be wondering is social media for us? I don't want to mislead anyone, it's not for everyone, some employees aren't comfortable with the 110% accessibility of these sites, and the obvious privacy issues that can come up, but chances are there is someone within your organization that would love to start up the pages and take some time each day to building those relationships.
Just a few reasons to make the leap are:
*Unparalleled access to information like product support issues, customer buying habits, all things that before you had to guess at, now it's available for us, updated all the time!
*Collaboration, sites like wikis and online communities (like facebook) develop relationships that can live inside and outside the walls of a company. These sites can even be used to glean customer opinions on products and services.
*Increased control over the Company's Message. In an era where we are told that customers control the company's brand. A socialcorp can use the social media sites to further enforce their message and over and over again participate in real conversations driving home who we are, what we do and how awesome we do it!
One other major plus is that these sites are all free, MySpace, facebook, twitter, blogspot, wordpress.com (the list could go on) are all 100% free and they allow you to get your name, business, logo, picture all out there and potential customers are ready and waiting to meet you, and in turn you can separate them from some of their money! Companies, big and small have had to retool how they get new business and with competition at an all time high, keep that business. Social media sites will undoubtedly help with both challenges.
Becoming a social corp. is nothing to take lightly, even if you don't have a large following to begin with, it is always important to control all content put out there as if millions and millions of people will see it. (And remember Google is forever!) If you’re going to start tweeting on twitter, you need to keep it current, don't just force product pitches at your followers, get to know them! Talk to them; learn their kids’ names or favorite sports teams! If you don't they will un-follow you, or block you all together! If you opt to write a blog for a corporation, keep it on topic, (if you’re a mommy blogger at home keep it at home!) Regarding all your sites, always make sure that an administrator has to approve comments before they go up on your sites, the last thing you want is a nasty gram sent through without your knowledge. Lastly have fun!! These sites are created for just that purpose, there will always be customers out there that want formality, and if all your social media sites are ran correctly you should be able to appeal to all customers.
You can follow Dumpstr Xpress on twitter
We are also on facebook, you can find us under the name:
robin wilson dumpstr xpress
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