Wednesday, 11 March 2009
Your Company Doesn't Need Social Media
The amusing and disturbing Ryan Air incident shows that even some of the most well known brands don’t really give a hoot about social media. Maybe they think that they don’t need social media.
I would say they are probably right, their companies don’t really need social media to run business as usual. People will still fly with your airline, buy your deodorant and purchase your music player, in fact, most of your customers probably don’t even know what social media even is, they probably don’t have a blog, and don’t have a clue what twitter is or what it is for.
In short, your world and that of most of your customers WILL GO ON. But, maybe that’s not the full story. Because while you and most of your clients are getting on with things, people are talking about you. They’re blogging about you, posting photos of your product, discussing your latest offers and service with their friends on facebook, and firing off tweets about you on twitter.
Are you curious to know what they’re saying? You probably spend a lot of money doing customer research and usability studies. Shoving clients and target market representatives into artificial situations asking them all kinds of questions to get insights into your brand and the way people use your services, and you’re paying for it.
Isn’t it worth the effort to get a few enthusiastic members of staff to jump in and at least to listen to it and see what people are saying. If they have the patience and you give them the benefit of the doubt, they can even start getting involved in the discussion and conversations. You have clients out there asking for help, asking how to upgrade their service, getting frustrated by a design flaw, thinking out loud about how to make your product better. Lots of valuable information, lots of valuable opportunities to interact with your (potential) clients and make a great impression.
Isn’t it worth it? I certainly think so and maybe if you don’t you’re competitors will.
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