Picking a face, part 2.
This week’s social media blog posts:
Monday: Using Social Media to address your pain points.
Tuesday: Use Social Media to give your customers a seat at the table.
Wednesday: Picking a face for the organization.
Thursday: Picking a face, part 2.
Friday: Give away your expertise.
(This is the sixteenth in our series of Social Media posts for the month of October. We look forward to your feedback on this series.)
Embracing Social Media is more about the culture than the technology. It implies that you as an organization have moved away from the “top down” model of communicating with customers, and is foregoing the natural tendency of wanting to control every communication. You are now committed to involving customers in a conversation. Your organization is demonstrating its trust in its customers.
Social Media provides the opportunity to tap the strengths of your “passionistas” (those within your organization who best embody the values of the company, and are honestly interested in helping customers). Blogs are another great way to get the individual voices of an organization speaking for the brand.
Blogs can provide fresh content for your followers and can help you build a reputation as a “thought leader” in your industry. And it doesn’t have to be the CEO doing the blogging—in fact in my opinion, in most cases it is better if it isn’t. You’ll want to pick somebody who is comfortable with the practice of blogging, and who is in a position to relate to customers and what they are looking for. As with all Social Media, you’ll want to be transparent. No ghost writing. And as comments to posts come in, moderation of those responses should be very light if at all.
“Selling” disguised as “blogging” doesn’t work, either. A blog’s point of view really has to start with the reader. What is an issue the customer is having that we have the expertise to help them with?
Online services like WordPress and Blogger have made starting and maintaining a blog simple. If there’s one word I would recommend to keep in mind when blogging, it is “consistent.” Have a consistent point of view. Consistently add fresh content. And consistently be a voice your followers want to hear.
Blogs can add a personal face to a very corporate organization. Wells Fargo Bank recently started a series of employee blogs directed at building engagement with groups that are traditionally underserved by the financial industry—students, minorities and single-parent households. These blogs are written from the point of view of the writer, not the bank. Bloggers often refer to the bank’s products or policies, but do it in the context of trying to be of help to these groups.
If you are interesting in blogging, our advice would be to follow other blogs before you jump in. A great place to start would be alltop.com, a web portal that bills itself as an “online magazine rack,” and can connect you with hundreds of relevant blogs in different industries and categories. Or, check Google Blog Search to find out what people are reading.
Another benefit of blogs is that they can help build your organization’s profile on search engines. As others forward or link to your content, you are developing a more in-depth online “story” about your organization.
Tomorrow, we’ll talk about a content strategy that can help you get started.
Posted by Mickey
Similar Posts:
- Give away your expertise.
- Picking a face for the organization.
- The two kinds of online consumers.
- Your Social Media strategy: What are you hoping to achieve?
- Action steps for getting your business started in Social Media—today.
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