Following a long weekend of being unplugged in the lush green hills of Pennsylvania, I came home with real work to do — an excellent lunch with a colleague, a great meeting with a prospective client and then teaching the third day of class at Kent State. The rest of the week includes a client meeting, a group meeting with another prospective client and the arrival of a friend from out of town, plus a panel discussion with PRSA Akron and teaching. When exactly do I have time to blog or tweet?
I confess that I am wondering about the value of social media — it requires a significant time commitment (especially if one wants to be helpful by finding interesting posts and tweeting them out rather than just trumpeting one’s latest personal ruminations.) I know that this same question, from the reader’s perspective, is being asked in companies all around the country (at least…) I see great value in establishing connections, using the social media tools as a part of an overall outreach strategy, but thus far I’m not certain of the marketing value, perhaps because it’s been such a short time since I launched Communication AMMO.
There is no doubt that making personal connections with prospective clients will require employing other tools — I’ll attend the Institute for PR Summit on Measurement next month, as well as the IABC Heritage Region Conference here in Cleveland in hopes of broadening my business network. But with most of my Twitter followers being consultants and providers, and my blog readers coming mostly from my existing network, the need to expand beyond social media is readily apparent. Where are the clients? Are they not using these tools?
What’s your view?
Tags: @commammo, Blog, communication, Communication AMMO, communication experts, communication messages, communication vehicles, effective communication, employee, evaluation, Facebook, internal communication, Journalism, measurement, PR measurement, Public Relations, reputation management, Social Media, Twitter
Sean,
You pose a great question. “Where are the clients and WHY are they not using these tools”.
I am thinking about starting a blog myself, and I find myself asking the question “what is the problem I am trying to solve?”
Often as I am going through the “what problem” question, I find myself using the AMMO technique as it helps me clarify the answer. My hats off to you and AMMO.
As I see it, maybe the problem I am trying to solve is figuring out a way to capture all those “gems” that I come up with. A virtual storehouse of ad hoc knowledge, captured for posterity. Somewhere I can direct people to in the future to browse through and see if I can help solve a problem for them.
Thank you for posing the quesiton, and have a great day
-Mike
Thanks Mike — the big question is whether customers will engage on a B2B level with any of these tools. If there is a direct benefit, I believe they will, but content really is King in these matters — if it’s compelling and we can figure out a way to make people aware of it, they’ll come to the table…
Appreciate you taking the time to comment!
Blogging, if done well, should help generate a thought leadership profile for the blogger. This ‘should’ lead to perceptions of the blogger being an expert, or at the very least passionate, thorough, literate on and concerned about their topics. My counsel is that this leads to positive business and stakeholder relationship outcomes.
Twittering? Well, it is so here one second gone the next, I think at this point it is totally hit and miss unless you have a mass of followers or your followers are very influential and can retweet/extrapolate etc and enhance your thought leadership position.
FB is a bit of a mix of both the above. But, like always, it depends on the comm mix and stakeholder/target audience profile.
When I look at those who I follow on Twitter, though, I really do think are they actually doing anything of substance? Too many tweets equals a dullard, I suspect. Too much time looking at their own reflection. Though I am the first to jump on a handy retweet!
Thanks Craig. Obviously, more to explore in this space!
I’m facing that quesiton right now, as I prepare a social media strategy for my company. It’s a component of a larger communications strategy, but, for us, an important one. If you’re trying to drive organic traffic to your ecommerce site, social media plays a role.
The question I’m facing is how and what role? It seems to be more of a PR function – a way to ring the bell, barker in the customers – than anything else. And the poster above is correct – you have to have a compelling call or no one is all that interested.
I’ll be bold enough to say that blogs are dead. They’re a fine hobby, but any true “blog” of value today is truly online journalism – be that B2B, B2C, B2B2C and so on. It’s the natural evolution of the news medium. Regardless of your political views, “The Huffington Post” is an excellent example. Is it a blog? Nope. It’s a an online newspaper, with a particular bias. Headlines, lead story, news column, editorial column, and so forth.
I’m slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly building a “blog” at http://www.midwestmoviemaker.net. I am not treating it like a blog, but as a news source. A very niched news source, but that’s what the Internet allows.
I’m digressing … Social media is a channel to explore and to participate in (“join the conversation” as all the content strategists will tell you) and build SEO. It’s a piston in the engine. But it is not the engine.
Tom, thanks for your comments. Read the “social media country club” post I refer to in the latest item. Enlightening.
It is more than ringing the bell and shouting — the idea, emerging from branding, is to build relationships with your customers, make them raving fans (to quote a book title). How that works is anyone’s guess, though there are ample anecdotes that seem to support it.
Whether socmed is or is not “the engine” depends on your business, your customers and your own objectives.
Thanks again for weighing in !