Here’s an interesting help wanted posting from The Software Freedom Law Center. An organization more interested in your online commenting than your resume for this job.
Of course the job is for Public Relations, but I believe that you will see more of this as social media becomes more deeply ingrained in all kinds of advertising and promotion. Potential employers will be looking at what you say on blogs and maybe even sites like Facebook and Twitter.
Iron City Beer has long been a symbol of the City of Pittsburgh. It’s no secret that they and many other local brewers have struggled mightily to save their brands in recent years.
Several years ago Rolling Rock Beer was purchased by Anheuser Busch. They moved them out of their mountain home (Latrobe PA) and spend a gazillion dollars to promote the brand nationally. Rolling Rock is now for sale so I guess the experiment failed.
Iron City recently moved out of the city and into Rolling Rock’s old brewery. It’s much more modern and Iron City is planning to make and sell much more beer to stay alive. One of the things that they are counting on to sell more beer is social media. If you have ever seen a Pittsburgh Steeler road game you’ve probably seen thousands of towel waving fans. Many of them have moved from The ‘Burgh over the years, but still possess their hometown loyalty. Iron City is counting on that loyalty and social media to spread the word instead of a huge advertising campaign.
So far all that I’ve seen is a “coming soon” website OneCityOneNation.com and a pretty good slogan -”One City. One Nation. One Beer.” This should be an interesting one to watch. Successful social media campaigns are very hard to manufacture, but Pittsburgh fans in far away lands are a different breed as well.
When I speak to business people about how I use Twitter, many of them want to know if it’s something that can help their business. Unless they’re living under a rock they’ve heard of Twitter and all kinds of social media, but many of them are not involved either in their business or personally. Hearing all of the hype they know they should be doing something, but don’t have a clue what.
I have written about this before and I believe it may be better for some not to do anything, but most businesses can benefit from a good social media strategy. Recently Twitter has posted a very good tutorial for business. I can recommend that anyone who’s interested in learning about what can be in it for them, should check out.
It’s been my experience that the companies that are doing well these days with social media are the ones that let their people speak freely online and that alone can provide them with an organization for their people to brag about. Of course, if they aren’t willing to publicly address complaints it won’t work anyway.
So many companies these days are paralyzed by the fear of someone saying something bad about them on their own site that they won’t allow anything, but “official” communication. Rather than letting their people do the social marketing they try to manufacture viral campaigns.
I find that viral marketing is very hard to manufacture and even harder to maintain. Even if you do manufacture a good campaign unless there is also something that reminds the audience of your name it’s not worth much.
Here’s a good article on MediaPost that offers help with social video.
I recently read a blog post that talked about how long it took for a customer to tune out the message that they should have a blog on their site. The writer then gave some very important reasons why it’s good for any business owner to have a relevant blog on their site. There comments were all well taken and things that I have written about before.
While that’s all well and good there are also reasons, some of them good, to not have a blog. Here’s my reply.
I agree with most of your advice about blogging, but it’s certainly not for everyone.
Many businesses these days won’t put in the time to write good content on a regular basis and will give up long before they have an opportunity to build any kind of a community. You probably know as well as I do that a blog that’s stale and not updated often or at all is far worse than not having one at all.
Lastly I have worked for and with many business owners who would rather have bamboo under their fingernails than let a visitor make a negative comment about THEIR business on THEIR site. They can’t imagine allowing and publicly answering a legitimate complaint can be good for them.
I believe that creating and constantly updating your social media is the right way to go, but this thinking is far more common.
Can social networking hurt your business? You bet it can! I have written many times before about how quickly bad publicity can spread these days.
One of the main reasons that I hear from small business owners about why they don’t want to spend the time to get into social networking is that they are worried that someone will say something bad about them.
I have some news for all of those people, no one needs your blog or forum to tell the world about what they think of your business. I recently read a good post by Frank Marafiote called How Social Networking Can Kill a Business. His main point is “Don’t let the mud hang there on the wall with no counter-response. Otherwise, readers will assume it is true.”
My main point about this is how can you respond to something that you don’t even know is there? You need to be involved in social media at least to the point where you know what is being said about you.
I have been reading quite a bit on social media lately and Twitter in particular. I thought I would try some of the strategies that I have seen to make this site better by bring more visitors to the site. I am always looking for more customers, inbound links and visitors to comment on my blog posts.
One of the things that I see often is that people on social networking sites like to read about themselves. So people on Twitter like to read articles about Twitter, folks on Digg like articles about Digg, etc. I am going to write more posts on this topic and try some new strategies. My customers ask more often lately about if and how this works, so I will write more posts about what works for me and what doesn’t.
Today I added the Tweet This plugin for WordPress that you now see at the bottom of all my blog posts. It’s an experiment to see if tweeters will retweet some of my posts and possibly pick up some more followers. Please feel free to share here what works for you.
I know of many businesses that are scared to death of using social media. They fear someone writing something bad about them. Worse yet if it’s a blog they are writing something bad about us on our own website.
It seems to me that if someone has something bad to say about you or your business they are probably going to say it to as many people in as many places as they can. If you can get them to say it in a place where you can control and answer their concerns, you are way ahead of the game. If you don’t even know where or what they are saying it’s a lot harder to deal with. Best of all if you are able to work out a solution to their issues you look like a hero.
That’s just the bad stuff that can happen, if you have a positive message about your business people will listen harder when they’re told (or shouted to) by your customers. Not only that they will happily let you know if you are on the right (or wrong) track. What better way to make your customers happy than to ask them what they want or to have them suggest something that you haven’t thought of.
One of the things that I have gotten out of my short go around with Twitter so far are some good blog posts. Try Shannon Paul’s post called…
It never fails. I start to write or wonder about a particular subject and then articles and blog posts start to appear as if by magic. I’m sure it’s just bacause I’m more tuned in to picking out the ones that I’m thinking about from the crowd, but I also wonder if the Law Of Attraction is at work here or even if that’s how it works.
Last week I wrote Is Social Media Worth The Time? and then today I see several new things on the subject. The one that caught my eye is How to Tell If Facebook Is Wasteful or Worthwhile, For Your Business on the Free Traffic Tips site written by Tinu Abayomi-Paul. There were some great ideas on how to get social networking sites to work for almost any business without sucking up the entire day. I’m going to try out some of these ideas and let you know how they worked for me.
I have had an account on FaceBook and LinkedIn for quite a while now, but only recently have I started to use them. I also thought about Twitter, but decided that I really only have the time to concentrate on one of them. I picked LinkedIn for that because I thought it was geared more toward business and that’s really what I’m in it for.
I don’t know if any of them will actually do me any good or just waste my time. I have already spent quite a bit of time working on my profile, answering questions and generally trying to be a good neighbor, but have only noticed a large increase in spam business newsletters in my inbox.
The Nielsen Company is reporting that social networking is way up (big surprise) and has now passed email in Internet communication. Since I’m looking at social media in terms of helping my business I’m wondering if it’s replacing legitimate business communication or is it mostly the jokes and chain email that your friends and family send to you. I’m guessing it’s the latter, but I will keep my options open since it sometimes takes only one or two good new contacts to make a business.
