Can Facebook, Twitter and Blogs Help Grow a Business?
My apologies to those who attended the Retail Marketing Society’s Nov. 18 luncheon, in which you were a great attentive and curious audience for my session, “Social Media: Can Facebook, Twitter and Blogs Help Grow a Business?”
I owe some of you an abridged version of the presentation (complete with links and whatnot), and should have taken care of reworking that well before Thanksgiving. And I don’t want to joke and say, “Christmas is Coming!”
But at the same time, I want to share some of the interesting points either I brought up, or the audience chimed up about.
First, it was great to know that the audience got it: Social media is not a sales channel, nor is it for push marketing. And as I was talking to some retail marketers for the presentation, they got it, too. The best quote came from Bob Thacker, the SVP marketing/advertising for Office Max:
“Social media means you also have to have social grace. You don’t go up someone you just met on the street and say ‘Hey, buy my product!’ It’s taking a panhandler approach, and you get shut off.”
Yet it seemed when many marketers took their first stab at Facebook, Twitter, blogs, etc., they saw it as a sales channel. And in many cases, as a consumer, it got downright annoying.
As for Twitter, marketers get that, too. They see it’s as much a channel for listening as it is talking. And the more you talk, the more people are going to turn a deaf ear. Use the channel to offer customer service first, then to converse with customers, and then maybe offering coupon codes.
But the most intriguing topic was blogs. As soon as I presented Compendium Blogware CEO Chris Baggott’s five biggest corporate blogging mistakes, the notebooks and pens came out. So if anyone thinks blogging is a dead channel, you may want to think again.
