Why you have to engage in social media, even if you don't want to
blog.asmartbear.com
blog.asmartbear.com
On the other hand, I was building websites in the mid-90's and can remember the "why do I need a website" questions, and I would always struggle with a compelling answer. I guess I'm on the other side of the coin this time and I never thought to draw the parallels between early websites and early social media.
Got some thinking to do...
Ignoring it is like ignoring the Internet, but you still have to be cautious with new technologies.
First, I didn't like the tone of the article. My kneejerk reaction was "Don't tell me what I have to do". Secondly, I'd like to see some real analysis behind the statements. For example I keep hearing about Zappos, and twitter and what not, but I have been buying from Zappos for years because they have a large selection, fair prices, good photos and free fedex shipping both ways. I couldn't care less what they twitter about.
As to customer reviews, that is appropriate at the retail end. I am not going to go to Sennheiser's web site and look for headphone reviews. I am going to go to Amazon (did I mention how much I like free shipping both ways?) and read the reviews there. So browbeating Sennheiser into a blog, customer reviews and a twitter feed isn't going to make me more likely to buy their headphones. Reviews on Amazon saying "most confortable headphones I have ever bought; no sound leak; great audio quality; sturdier than the Other Brand" is what will make me buy.
As for blogs, god help me from another boring ill-conceived company blog. Over the course of a year, I consume products from hundreds of manufacturers and brands. You think I am going to add them all on my RSS feed? The blogs I read are by real human beings on deeply human topics. Not about which pair of shoes has sexy heels.
The reality is that in most cases, a consumer has a very brief relationship with a manufacturer eg, "My headphones broke. I need new headphones. I will research headphones. I will buy headphones. Done with headphones". A social network is based on building long term relationships. I do not want a long-term relationship with an entity I am only going to deal with once every three years.
Things like Nike are exceptions because it is a kind of brand that has fans, just like a sports team. It then becomes a special interest group, not just a commercial communication.
The comparison to Second Life is very apt, I find.
What this article says is that we are now in that future. Markets are conversations, and companies that aren't participating in the conversations are getting left out of the markets.
The Cluetrain Manifesto no longer reads like a series of utopian techno-determinist predictions. It reads like a matter-of-fact description of how Amazon does business, how Fog Creek does business, how Zappos and Twitter and Flickr and Facebook do business, and why they are kicking the asses of their competitors.
There are some very big companies that it still doesn't describe, though. It's been ten years since the Cluetrain Manifesto's 95 theses were nailed up on the door of the internet, and AT&T and Google and Microsoft and Comcast still haven't taken delivery from the clue train. Do they need to? Or can they keep doing business the same way as before?
The entire article hinges around this point. Your business -MUST- use Facebook/Twitter/"Social Media". The article then goes on to point a dozen examples of companies that were successful with nothing related to social media.
The day you see "Company X increased their sales by their Social Media presence" is the day Facebook & Twitter become profitable.
I'll throw it another one that he didn't mention: Dell, who has said they've done millions in business through their Twitter efforts.
Fog Creek establishes authority by having a well-received programming/business blog.
Nike has an online custom shoe store.
Zappos is big. Zappos is fanatical about customer service. Zappos uses Twitter as one small channel of their customer service initiative.
Marketing.FM has a blog.
If the article was about how blogs and customer service are good for business, it would have hit the mark. But I'm missing where Facebook, Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon, and Delicious fit in to those examples.
Zappos is big now, but they weren't always big, and I don't have any reason to not believe their CEO when he says that Twitter has been a big part of their success.
The Nike example was weak, I agree. But the Rubbermaid thing is a good example of using social media...just because they hosted those reviews on their site doesn't mean that it's not social media.
Here's another example that he missed: Yelp. In areas where Yelp membership is high, it has a big influence on local businesses.
I agree that some of the sites you listed probably don't have a big impact on the bottom line, but to write off social media entirely because some of the social media sites are time-wasters with no ROI is a mistake.
Twitter is definitely a useful communication channel, and it stands out from the rest of the fads: email, sms, tweeter. That pretty much covers all the modalities.
Yes I'm including "blogs" in social media. I'm also including things like having customer-driven reviews. It's sensible because "social media" general means things like going where the customers are and giving customers a strong (perhaps primary) voice in your own public persona.
I accept your criticism that Facebook and the link-sharing sites don't fit the mold nearly as well, nor are they the primary drivers behind those success stories. (Although in the case of Facebook at least examples do exist.)
I'm a fellow hacker on the leading edge of a lot of things who understands the importance of new developments, but even I have to call bullsh*t on such a ridiculous statement.
The problem is that OP is looking only at one demographic.
I have customers all over the U.S. transacting millions of dollars every day buying and selling almost anything you can imagine. And how do they communicate? Cell phone, land line, email, fax, EDI, and, oh yeah, they actually talk to each other. (Sometimes I think more deals are made at Starbucks and Einstein's before 8:00 a.m. than everywhere else all day long.)
No question we should always keep our eyes open to new possibilities. Everyone has a website and a cell phone. Lots of sales people get leads from LinkedIn. But facebook? Twitter? For fun, perhaps. For niche industries, sure. For the majority of business transactions? Hardly.
Will it be this way in 5 or 10 years? Who knows. Nothing would surprise me.
So if OP wants to say, "These new developments provide promise for the future of communication. You may want to learn about them and decide how to use them."
But to say "you have to" is stupid and irresponsible. Enough time is already wasted "friending" and "tweeting". The rest of us have work to do.
Of course it's a literary device, not meant to be a mathematical statement. I'm not sure "stupid and irresponsible" is quite right either?
But thanks for the response -- you're right that when reading stuff like this you always need to filter it through your own lens.