Like me.
Each of us come across thousands of brands and products each day and use them without a thought. How many of these businesses would you really like to be friends with on Facebook or follow on Twitter. Let’s face it, it’s not personal – it’s just that some businesses are not digitally “likeable”.
Quick fix
Adding social media share icons to you website will not change that. Running competitions to get “likes”, followers, subscribers are short term tricks. Recently we even heard that you could buy twitter followers – the going rate is $20 for 1,000. Cheaper than a competition and probably the same outcome.
Fan, follower or observer
An important thing to realise is that your potential audience may not be your clients. It may be your staff, suppliers, potential employees, potential clients and whether you like it or not, your competitors. The way you communicate may be different for each. They may never even like or follow you, they may just want to see what you’re doing and get a feel for who you really are.
Not just what we say but what we said.
Observers can be potential clients, prospective employees or anyone doing research about your business / brand. A half baked attempt at twitter that’s been abandoned can say more than no twitter feed at all. Just as what you’ve been talking about on twitter is on record, it gives readers an insight into what you’re about outside the context of a more formal website.
Be honest with yourself
In it’s simplest form ask yourself…
- who’s my audience if any
- what do they want to hear about from you
- how often are they prepared to listen
- what are we trying to achieve
The moral of the story
Who follows you says as much about them as it does you. While you don’t need to be cool hip and fun, you need to know that there are some parties your brand should be seen at, no matter how good you are at what you do. You won’t find a twitter feed or facebook like button on a funeral site.
The embarrassing part is that they more effort they put in to promoting social media, the sadder it usually is.
Social media is great, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not necessarily for business. I don’t want to be friends with a taxi company, I’m unlikely to like a post on
A simple example is a hardware here in town that had this posted in the main window. A year later, they have 8 followers and have 9 tweets.
The hardest thing about managing a digital presence is getting perspective on where your business or product sits on the internet or social media landscape. I’m sure you’ve seen a lot of companies that follow the digital fads, stumbling from one thing to the next while feeling good in their own minds knowing they’re making things happening.