In a place no one goes…

I was sitting outside today with my daughter and a person working for the local newspaper drove up- giving away copies of that paper. I was surprised at how thin the paper in general was, and when I glanced at the section that contained the classified ads was really shocked at how few there were.

Getting the word out about your business isn’t a dead endeavor, but it is changing.

“Yes, it was built entirely out of 140-character messages, but the sum total of those tweets added up to something truly substantive, like a suspension bridge made of pebbles.”- Steven Johnson in Time.com

This, of course, refers to twitter. Social media is changing the way businesses interact with present and prospective clients. Frank Eliason from Comcast introduced a customer care presence on twitter that has brought attention to the company- even if the twitter presence did not enhance customer service, the free PR generated was priceless. And consumers do feel that their problems can be solved more quickly.

Twitter, Facebook, social media microcultures- these are all low-cost ways to enlarge your presence with both consumers and with other businesses. And there are two aspects to it.

One is the technical- exactly how do you go about setting up this presence? Where can you make the most impact in this changing online environment? And the answers, of course, vary from business to business.

Even more important- do your employees, who have been tasked with the mission of representing you, know how to go about that? Social media is a “pull” type of contact, as opposed to traditional media which pushes your message out to many in the hopes that something sticks. Are your employees cognizant of the unwritten rules of engagement?

Get up to speed with what is going on. You don’t want to be stuck between chihuahuas and chows in a place no one goes.

Dinosaur

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Comments

HeyAmaretto says:

August 17, 2009 at 5:52 am

I really agree with you about how sad it is that the reign of print news has- and I will say it- ended. Historically, and socially, newspapers both filled a need and bridged a gap that, really, brought us to where we are now.

There is a fine dance between jumping too early on a trend- only to see it die- and moving too late- only to see your business die. Apple moved in with iTunes and created a bridge in the music industry here. Will the readers, such as Amazon’s Kindle, be the bridge for this industry?

Joe Sheehan says:

August 17, 2009 at 5:17 am

I visited my local pizza shop a few days ago. There on the counter was a pretty big stack of local newspapers. I just started to browse through the pile and found that there were several copies of each day’s newspaper from the past week.

I asked the proprietor why he had purchased so many copies of the newspaper each day. He told me that he had taken an ad and part of the deal was the newspaper company would provide free copies for his customers. Now this is a pretty busy pizza shop, they get a lot of traffic, and they can’t even give the newspaper away for free.

The pizza shop owner thought it was a good deal, he was getting free copies of the daily paper. I asked him how effective he thought his ad was if no one was reading the newspaper. I think he’s rethinking the wisdom of his ad buy.

I feel badly for the local newspapers. They’ve served their communities for decades and now their day is almost over. It illustrates to me how important it is to adapt to the new environment or whither and die.

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