- July 17, 2010
- Posted in Advertising
- 3 Comments
Businesses, it’s Social Media… Please Speak Like a Human
Most companies who begin to use social networks seem to just be proud of themselves because they think it’s the hip thing to do. Some businesses, big and small, seem to act like a little old lady when it comes to dealing with social media. It seems many businesses are simply happy that they’ve “gotten on the bandwagon” of social media. I truly believe that they don’t know what power they could really have if they truly embraced it.
You’re a Person, Talk Like One
I really don’t understand why businesses tweet like there’s not really an actual human being behind the keyboard. Twitter is a pretty casual experience. When you’re reading your time line of tweets, they’re not formal. I’m not saying I’m expecting big businesses to go dropping f-bombs everywhere, but you’re allowed to show a little personality. This could be a great chance for you to express the attitude of your company by simply tweeting the way you’d like to be looked at.
An example of a good tweet from @zappos
“HR employee had an intervention, forced me to clean my desk for an hour. I found a letter from @zappos_fred to me. From 2004.”
An example of a bad tweet from @chevrolet
“Following the @AllStarGame? Did you know Chevrolet has a baseball app for download! http://bit.ly/9LI071 #ChevyASG”
Side Note: Chevrolet is one of the top car manufacturers in the United states and they only have 5,741 followers. That’s pretty pathetic.
Engage and Comment with Users
Facebook offers so many ways for businesses to reach out to their customers. It boggles my mind why companies that have thousands of followers don’t update their company status. I also really don’t understand why that same company doesn’t respond to comments on their Facebook profile.
It really doesn’t even take much to engage, just do it.
Conclusion
As someone who is passionate about the online marketing experience, the internet gives businesses a brand new way to interact with customers in a close and unique way. Many businesses will continue to miss the point here, but the ones that get it seem to be finding continued success.
I can appreciate this article because this is partly what I do at work. The main reason I think that some companies lag behind on the Social Media networking is because they don’t have a dedicated person for this stuff. Most of the other employees from my office only worry about their specific tasks and not much else. As a matter of fact, they don’t even want to connect their personal social networking personalities to the company’s so I’m sort of the lone crusader in that aspect, but I don’t mind.
A while back, I wrote an article about certain things some companies should take into consideration when engaging in social networking online mainly because I felt the same.
BTW I saw this link on Drawar.
and here is the link to the article I referred to in the response
http://www.brickstonerealty.net/services/blog/social-networking.html
I agree that companies do need a dedicated PROFESSIONAL. Tons of people claim to be “social media experts,” but really don’t know anything except for how to stalk people on Facebook.
However, even when there is a dedicated professional for this stuff, people tend to get scared of their boss. It’s that persons job to let the higher ups (who might not want to be bothered with social media) understand that this is vital for the success of their company’s online social presence.
nice post, something we try to instill in clients all the time, be human, have a perspective, have fun with it and be accessible. be responsive and specific, don’t talk to the lowest common denominator, talk to people, customers…