Great post by my colleague William Weidendorf. I am wondering, what does your "free" social media cost you? For me: Lots and Lots of Time! Reading and Listening is such a huge investment, and so worth it!
Caveat Emptor: Free isn't Always Free
Almost everyone nowadays has a Facebook profile, most of us have LinkedIn accounts, and even some of us have Twitter accounts. And they were all free. This is great!
Next thing you know, you are signing up your businesses for a company Facebook Fan (now “Like”) page and a business Twitter account, and it’s still free! (Well, it took someone’s time to setup, but most companies don’t pay attention to this cost when it is internal.) One of two things happen -- either someone in your organization actively allocates time to maintain these “free” outlets or it is a great idea that just falls by the wayside. If the first happens, then not only is someone who may or may not have the correct story be publicly representing your company, but also someone else isn’t doing their job internally. More often than not though, people will do as people do: they lose interest. All of a sudden this shiny new toy becomes a lot like work, and it just goes by the wayside.
Now you’ve got your company Facebook page, Twitter account, and whatever else, but you no longer really maintain it for any number of reasons. And now, months down the road, any potential and current customers you could have engaged are now engaging with your competitors. And just like that, free just doesn’t seem so free -- actually, you’ve paid a very steep price.
And therein lies the rub -- if you build it and don’t maintain it, at best you are no better off for your efforts, or worse yet, you could give customers the wrong impression about your business. And if you never build it, then you just ignored potential customers!
So what to do? At the end of the day, the choice is yours: maintain these outlets internally and allocate it the proper resources, or hire a third party to do it for you. Whatever your choice may be, please, just don’t become another victim of “free”.
Always consider the size of your network on Social Media and how far it can reach. To put it all in perspective check out this video from YouTube channel Socialnomics09, based on the book Socialnomics by Erik Qualman.
Caveat Emptor: Free isn't Always Free
Almost everyone nowadays has a Facebook profile, most of us have LinkedIn accounts, and even some of us have Twitter accounts. And they were all free. This is great!
Next thing you know, you are signing up your businesses for a company Facebook Fan (now “Like”) page and a business Twitter account, and it’s still free! (Well, it took someone’s time to setup, but most companies don’t pay attention to this cost when it is internal.) One of two things happen -- either someone in your organization actively allocates time to maintain these “free” outlets or it is a great idea that just falls by the wayside. If the first happens, then not only is someone who may or may not have the correct story be publicly representing your company, but also someone else isn’t doing their job internally. More often than not though, people will do as people do: they lose interest. All of a sudden this shiny new toy becomes a lot like work, and it just goes by the wayside.
Now you’ve got your company Facebook page, Twitter account, and whatever else, but you no longer really maintain it for any number of reasons. And now, months down the road, any potential and current customers you could have engaged are now engaging with your competitors. And just like that, free just doesn’t seem so free -- actually, you’ve paid a very steep price.
And therein lies the rub -- if you build it and don’t maintain it, at best you are no better off for your efforts, or worse yet, you could give customers the wrong impression about your business. And if you never build it, then you just ignored potential customers!
So what to do? At the end of the day, the choice is yours: maintain these outlets internally and allocate it the proper resources, or hire a third party to do it for you. Whatever your choice may be, please, just don’t become another victim of “free”.
Always consider the size of your network on Social Media and how far it can reach. To put it all in perspective check out this video from YouTube channel Socialnomics09, based on the book Socialnomics by Erik Qualman.
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