I recently joined a team to do a deep dive into creating buzz about our company and specifically looking into social media. I love what I’ve found. I’ve been able to connect with so many people that have actually helped me to learn and think. That’s when I started this blog. I wanted to get my thoughts down about those things that I am working on and thinking about. I have recommended blogs and other social sites to many of my colleague and friends. Now I know what everyone is doing all of the time. I know what one of my old college buddies is working on through LinkedIn. An ex-girlfriend found me on Facebook that I haven’t talked to in ages and I reconnected with some friends that I had in Junior High.
In trying to push social media to my coworkers and even incorporate it into some of our projects, I have had people say, “We don’t want them to know that about us!” Social media is something that is pretty new to a lot of people and companies. It creates a type of corporate transparency. If you have a corporate blog then you are able to tell people what you are working on and they have the ability to talk back to you. They also have an avenue to tell you what they truly think about your company, good or bad.
Some people quiver at this. Why? If you don’t have somewhere that your customer base can go to and give you feedback, they will give it to you anyways and probably in places you may or may not know about. They’ll jump on Twitter and tweet to all of their followers just what they think of you. Most of the time it won’t be pretty and you will have just fueled the fire. You are telling your customers that you don’t care enough to let them tell you what they think.
It’s easy to create a blog, just check our WordPress or Blogger. It’s a piece of cake to put up a form that your customers can submit their questions and comments to you. You really have no reason not to do it, unless that is, you are worried what people will say. If that’s the case, maybe you outta rethink things. If you aren’t transparent then you are opaque. You have to be one or the other. If you don’t have the transparent mediums in place for your customers then, by default, you’re opaque.
Give it a try, put up a blog or a Facebook fan page and see what people say. Come on back and let me know what your experience was.
Photo by urbanshoregirl
