If you own, manage or work in a business, you’re a marketer. Marketing may not be your specialty – that is, you may not be the one calling the shots when it comes to marketing plans and decisions, but you are still an integral part of that activity. You are a marketer, like it or not.
Don’t think so? Think clear back to a time when (generally) a “market” meant a place in town where booths, shops and carts were set up to sell meats, produce, and other goods. That’s marketing at its most basic: a presence in the marketplace.
Bear with me, now, as I try to connect some dots.
Humans, by their very nature, are goal-seeking. We can’t escape it. Since we have goals, we also have strategies. Without thinking we form strategies and implement tactics to achieve objectives. From our perspective it seems like we’re just washing dishes or running errands, but the processes behind these actions relate to our goals. It’s automatic. It’s human nature.
The fishmonger had a marketing strategy, though he probably didn’t know it. In fact it’s debatable whether anyone really “knew” about marketing strategies until the 20th century. They existed nonetheless, good and bad – unexamined.
Everyone can agree that marketing is an inherent component of business. In fact, it’s so fundamental that you actually “do” marketing simply by having a storefront (offline or on).
Since you can’t escape “doing” marketing, and since you are a goal-seeking human, you already have a marketing strategy whether you can identify it or not. It may have been created by someone else in your organization, or it may simply be composed of various ideas you’ve encountered throughout your career, or from interaction with colleagues. It may or may not be a good strategy. Either way, you’re using it.
But the quality of that strategy really is the question. Given that most of the activities you engage in for business fall under the category “marketing” (many of them indirectly), it’s probably a good idea to take a hard look at those activities as a collective and consider whether or not the totality of your efforts is furthering your business goals.
After all, we’ve come a long way from village-square peddlers. Everything has changed: the basic economy, currency, range of customers, type and range of goods and services, the scope and scale of everything…marketing in a modern economy is much more complex. It takes multiple people, sometimes a large staff of just marketing folks. It takes strategy – well researched and articulated.
You have a marketing strategy. Ask yourself if it’s effective or not. Track data. Measure results. Refine your plan. Just don’t leave it up to chance.
"People are in social media to be socially active, not to be sold."
Earlier this week, I attended a Social Networking seminar at Western Dakota Tech, put on by the Rapid City Chamber of Commerce. It was really quite interesting with approximately 85 people from local businesses in attendance.
I was particularly interested in what Adam Beshara (Marketing Specialist at Golden West Technologies) would share about Twitter and then how Realtor Lee Alley (with Prudential Kahler Realtors) would talk about Facebook for business. Both of these presenters impressed me with their realistic take/talk about social media for business in general. So much so, I want to share some of their key (form my perspective) points.
Twitter
Starting with Twitter, Adam introduced the social site with a pretty basic definition – perfect for the audience who was largely unfamiliar with Twitter. He then went on to explain some of the benefits of Twitter for business and how to use it. These are my favorite points he made:
Monitor Twitter for local and industry related questions. By answering these and being involved, you not only gain followers but begin branding yourself/business as the authority on the matter – not to mention build relationships.
Watch your tone! “People are in social media to be socially active, not to be sold.”
Contests! Hold some sort of contest or giveaway to encourage participation and gain followers. (I really like this idea…I really like to win stuff.)
He then made it clear that you shouldn’t just hop on and proceed to waste your time. He gave the following tips to help make it work (each applies to all social media platforms):
- Define your goals.
- Follow like-minded Tweeters.
- Listen and learn.
- Create effective tweets.
- Develop unique content for your audience.
- Grow relationships.
Facebook Lee Alley’s got the idea right! His use of Facebook is not overly extensive; he keeps it relevant, and he does not stretch himself thin with time spent there. Mr. Alley also made it very clear that your #1 aim should be to be helpful. He has a Rapid City real estate blog where he analyzes and writes about local real estate market trends – and it is not promotional. “If I gain some friends along the way, well great,” he said.
My favorite points and quotables from his presentation are cautioning to not get caught up in the tools and buzz words of online social networking.
This is a good one– “If the medium is your message, your message will be medium.” Lee emphasized to not just get involved in Facebook because everyone’s doing it, but asked, “Do you really want to get involved in social networking?”
“Social networking is not all about Facebook.” There are many other tools and platforms out there – Facebook is not the be all end all of social media.
“Do you want to have a long-term strategy to incorporate social networking into your overall marketing?”
“The issue [online social networking] is not Facebook. Facebook will eventually be replaced by something else” – as will any other tool.
Lee did an excellent job laying out Facebook and how it can and is being used as a marketing tool, while walking through and demonstrating many different points that he’s learned along the way.
Overall, the presentations these two men gave were entirely encouraging. People do get it, I thought to myself as I walked back to the car with a little bounce in my step. I hope more local businesses start doing contests on Twitter. I hope I win.
Are you ready for the holidays? Well, it is now October – Rapid City’s first snow has fallen. Yes, it is long-due time to start thinking about the holidays – and holiday advertising (see tips below).
With a well crafted message, promotion and placement, holiday advertising can be incredibly effective. Whether your business is retail or service oriented and regardless of your product’s gifting nature, the holidays are an opportune time to connect with people.
Reasons for holiday advertising:
People are in the buying/giving spirit and feeling nostalgic.
Your competition is surely advertising. If they’re not, you have a huge advantage!
TOMA (top of mind awareness). During the holidays, people have a number of things on their minds. Even if you’re not selling gifts, you don’t want them to forget about you.
People are looking for deals and gift ideas – paying attention to ads.
Increased sales numbers. We’ve seen clients experience a 50% sales increase (or more) from a holiday ad campaign!
There are plenty more. What are your reasons for advertising, or not, during the holidays?
Ok, but why so soon?
Honestly, the sooner the better – many companies even start planning in the summer. Locally, it is best to have your holiday campaigns planned and placed (or at least started) by mid-October!
Whether the plan is to run television ads, newspaper inserts or radio ads, the media companies have a limited ad space inventory.The time of day, shows and networks bought can have a dramatic affect on your advertising results. Reserving spots now will ensure you reach the right people with the right messages and at the right time to get the most out of your marketing budget.
Tips for Effective Holiday Advertising
Direct Mail can be great for holiday promotions. Just remember that it has to stand out. Especially during the holidays when everyone is trying to get people’s attention, your direct mail pieces have to be unique in size, fold, shape, colors and overall design. You’ll also need an offer (buy one, get one; dollar or percentage off; FREE; bonus; etc.) and call to action significant enough for people to care. It needs to immediately capture attention. And remember that if it looks like junk, it will probably end up in the trash (or compost bin in my case).
Television is a common favorite for holiday advertising. Since people are generally more emotional during the holiday season, television with its visuals, music and creative concepts, is able to successfully appeal to people’s emotions.
Radio can reach people when they’re already in the car, out and about shopping or traveling. This can be especially good for retailers and restaurants. Restaurants, for instance, can appeal to people busy with holiday shopping, parties, and planning when cooking is often the last thing they want to deal with.
Newspaper advertising, having similar benefits and challenges as direct mail, has to be unique enough for people to notice in the slew of ads and inserts. This can be highly effective, though, especially for retail businesses that are offering a sale. Many people scour sales ads in the newspaper before setting out to do their holiday shopping. Again, the offers have to be significant enough for people to care.
Web marketing before/during the holidays can greatly benefit retailers. A lot of people do their holiday shopping online these days. Using social media, a website, or online ads can help draw shoppers back to your physical retail store. Offering special insentives and sales exclusively for your online followers can get them through your front door. And as always – make sure that your offline advertising reaches your online audience by making all of your messages available online to those searching for more info.
All-in-all, if your business does not currently advertise during the holidays, it is definitely something to look into and it’s not too late. If you do advertise during the holidays and haven’t started planning, production or placement – get on it!
Are you ready? Have you already started your planning? Have you already started your holiday shopping? Do you pay attention to ads during the holidays?
What is “good” web design? Many people don’t understand what makes websites good or bad, and some are even surprised to learn that effective web design takes time, and isn’t cheap. Let me explain…
When you look at a website, you’re looking at an end product. Like a car, there’s really no indication of what went into the creation of the product. We can break it down into its individual parts – wheels, pistons, frame, gears – but we don’t know *why* they, specifically, were used in its construction, or how to acquire and assemble the right types of parts for another car.
Who decides what’s good?
Most of us probably don’t understand how cars are designed, and have only a basic understanding of how they work. But we do know how to use them. We call them “sweet” or “clunker,” seeing distinctions in quality based on various attributes, such as age, safety, power, or utility.
Let’s dwell on that for a second. The designers and engineers who build these complex machines understand them a gazillion times better than you or I, and yet *we* are the arbiters of automotive quality? How does that work?
It’s simple, really. Cars are designed to solve our traveling problems. Need to pull cargo in hilly terrain? Alright, here’s a truck with more power…how’d we do?
“I need cargo space, but also passenger room.” Here’s your gas-guzzler.
“I need a place to put my drink while on long trips.” Okay: this model has 200 cup holders.
“I need an economical car.” Here’s a chair on wheels.
And we get to be the judge as to how well they’ve accomplished those goals. SUV? Wildly popular. Chair on wheels? Not so much.
So these researchers, designers, engineers and others all get together and attempt to solve our problems. They each have a role in the design and construction of our cars, and, together with all the complex parts and mechanisms in the machine, make for a price that can be pretty shocking.
After all, it’s just this little car. Like…a frame on wheels, right? With lights. And gears. Computers. An engine. Hoses and fluids and wires. Fabric and safety belts and airbags and safety glass and…yeah, that sounds expensive now.
You know what? I bet many of us could walk into a big automotive company office and tell those designers a thing or two about building cars. They’re made for *us*, after all. “Here’s what I want…”
But we’re not really telling them how to design cars, are we. We’re just telling them what problem we want them to solve. In the end we trust them to solve these problems in the most effective way, all variables taken into account, because we just don’t know how to design or build cars.
So now that we’ve completely forgotten the point of this article, let’s get back to web design.
Web design is…
The process of solving a business problem, communicating a message, and facilitating user action on the web. That’s my working definition. By all means, critique it in the comments – I’d love to get it nailed down.
1. Solving a business problem.
Website design – even print graphic design – is not art. As a designer, I’m not creating a work of art. The graphical and architectural decisions I make throughout the process are not primarily based on my own preferences – I have reasons for each choice I’ve made.
This is because I am creating a solution to a business problem. However one might want to articulate that problem, it usually can be constructed as an objective end, “Generate more foot traffic,” or, “Increase non-local sales,” or, “Take over the world.” Whatever the objective, all of my efforts as a designer revolve around it and attempt to fulfill it. This takes research and planning, information organization, writing, discussion, graphics work and programming.
The point here is that web design isn’t like creating art. Designers do have to think about the aesthetic form of the design, but within the context of business goals and the rules that go along with a communicated message.
2. Communicating a message.
With every website, something specific needs to be communicated, both visually and through the copy. Call it the brand or the marketing message – either way for this message to be communicated successfully, graphic and structural decisions must be subordinate to it. Does this color help convey the message? Does it fit the brand? Is it simply a preference? In web design, preferences must die.
3. Facilitating user action.
If there’s a clear goal for a website, the website user or “visitor” is involved on some level. You want them to read something, click something, subscribe, purchase, or interact in some other way. The design of the website must facilitate and not hinder whatever action you want the user to take.
All design decisions must be subordinate to usability. If a website looks great but is slow and clunky, or isn’t easy to figure out, it is not an effective solution to your business problem. Yet if it’s incredibly usable but has no visual appeal, you might also say it’s less effective than it could be. So there is a balance to be found, but when it comes down to either aesthetics or usability, usability must win. If your visitors don’t take the action you want them to take, you’ve failed.
Clear as mud?
I know there is confusion out there, and I hope this helps somehow. Creating a website is not just painting a pretty picture or moving some colored boxes around on the screen. It is an attempt to construct the most effective solution to meet a business goal, and sometimes this can be a lofty endeavor. There are so many things to consider beyond just the “look” of the site: the user experience, structure of information, findability, search engines, and more. It’s no wonder this stuff takes time.
But we’re not talking about a piece of wall art, here. This is a business investment, the core of your company’s web presence – a web used by over 1.5 billion people worldwide.
Don’t you think that’s something to take seriously?
If you’re not moving forward, you’re moving backward.
Marketing in a recession can give you a competitive advantage.
Cut advertising, cut market share.
I want to take another look at the fourth point here, as marketing in a recession really does give you an advantage. In truth, marketing ANY time gives you an advantage. But when the economy is down and a lot of businesses are cutting their marketing budgets, your dollars can go even further because there are fewer or weaker messages out there to compete with.
AND I even came prepared with an example.
The Stocks section of Sunday’s Rapid City Journal featured a “behind the brand” look at Diamond Foods – makers of snacks including Emerald Nuts and now Pop Secret. It turns out our “recession” has not taken a toll on the sales of their relatively healthy treats.
According to the Associated Press,
The company has been plowing more dollars into building its Emerald brand: Ad spending is up 23 percent so far this fiscal year… Emerald’s sales at grocery stores grew 30 percent last quarter.
Analysts expect more gains when it reports fourth-quarter results later this month.
That’s an amazing statement! They have some pretty good ads that came from this new budget, like the one below. Not only do they have the good tv spots, they also have all of the new ads on their snazzy website and YouTube, taking their offline messages to their online audience – sort of.
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Well played Diamond Foods! Great product, great packaging and great ads. But I have to dock you a couple of points for the lack of web marketing. I give your marketing a 7.6 out of 10. Keep it up (and call me about SEO). ;)
It is essential for companies large and small to understand the importance of marketing as part of business and strategy. When money is tight, marketing is often the first thing cut. This certainly should not be the case. If your marketing is not providing sufficient ROI to justify it, or if you don’t measure ROI to justify it – something is wrong. Don’t cut your marketing, reset it, or invest better to make it work!
“The man who stops advertising to save money is like the man who stops the clock to save time.” -Thomas Jefferson (and he didn’t even work for a marketing agency)
Hey everyone, big thanks to those of you who attended our IM seminar over lunch on Wednesday. We had a blast, and hope you enjoyed it and found it helpful. Thanks to the Howard Johnson Inn & Suites in Rapid City for hosting the event.
We’ve embedded the slide deck below for your reference, and also included some key takeaways from what we talked about. As always, if you have any questions leave a comment or get in touch with us in whatever way you prefer. ;)
We’re also going to be posting some more related info in the coming weeks that should help clarify some things we discussed, so stay tuned for that. Go ahead and subscribe if you like, so you don’t have to remember to check back! We are always open to suggestions for new blog posts. If there is something you would like us to write about or if you have any questions, feel free to comment below.
Markets: where buyers and sellers interact for goods, services, and information.
Marketing: the full management process from concept to customer (businessdictionary.com)
Promotion within traditional marketing (mediums) and interactive marketing is different in where advertising and promotions are placed: traditional being television, radio, magazines, newspapers, while interactive is online.
Millions of people still use traditional media on a daily basis and companies would be wise to combine their placement of advertising/marketing with traditional media and online.
Online is where marketplaces are growing as viewership, listenership, and readership decreases among traditional mediums. Every demographic is online from young to old with interests in every industry. In fact, retirees and baby boomers are the growing demographic online.
Benefits of Interactive Marketing
The marketing principles are the same – you’re still addressing people with a want/interest/need that you fill and letting them know that you have the solution.
Five core elements of interactive marketing (web marketing, online marketing, internet marketing, new media – all the same): website/blog, SEO/SEM, banner ads, email, and social media.
People need to be viewed/approached differently. It’s not all about you. BE HELPFUL. Share what you know and give back to the community. Once you gain people’s trust (and interest), you can start mixing in promotion.
Networking, fostering relationships and authenticity online shows that you care about the people you do business with and makes people feel good about doing business with you. People buy from people and social interaction gives your company a face and a personality.
Gain insight and influence. What’s going on out there? What do people want from you?
Interactive marketing can be used as a sales tool…on many different levels. From blogging and raising awareness, to directly addressing and filling an expressed need.
Your online audience is very targeted and direct. When you are online and relevant…and optimized, people that want what you have will find you.
It is important to “connect the dots” for your audience. Take your offline messages to your online audience.
Finally, interactive marketing is efficient. It does still take time and money if you want to do it right, but what you put into it goes a long way.
There is truly a lot that interactive marketing can do for your company, I just tried to highlight some main points. In summary, the stronger your company’s online and interactive presence, the stronger its relationships/findability will be, and more likely people will choose you over another option.
How to Use Interactive Marketing
Listen, listen, listen. This gives you insight into your audience and market, as well as opportunities to engage. Use Google Alerts, Technorati, BoardTracker, and tools like Social Mention. Use regular search engines. Create online polls for your existing customers.
Have an objective. What do you want to accomplish online? This should be based on your research (listening), and should serve your overall business strategy.
Form a strategic plan for your online efforts. Makes as many decisions and answer as many questions as you can before you begin: budget, staff, resources, content, presentation, metrics…this will save you time and money in the end.
Make sure your tactical process serves your strategy, rather than your personal taste. Each technology has a specific purpose, and your business won’t need all of them. Most (but not all) organizations will benefit from use of a blog, Facebook page or Twitter (or all of the above). The best way to learn the technical side is to dive in and start using these tools. Just make sure to start with your objective.
Evaluate your efforts. You decided in the beginning what you wanted to measure, now assess how you did. What other data did you gather that may give you unexpected insight into the process? If you don’t know what worked and what didn’t work, you’ll have a more difficult time justifying and improving your efforts. So evaluate what you did, refine your objective, and repeat the cycle.
Remember, marketing hasn’t changed. It’s fundamentally the same, whether offline or online. It incorporates both traditional and “new” media into a synchronized relationship, giving you access to your entire audience (they ARE in both spaces), and the power of new technology.
Play to win! Focus on the objective and build a strategy to get there.
Having a web strategy is a lot like declaring a major in college – once you decide on a career path and declare your major, you have a clear objective, something to work toward. This defines the classes you take, maybe your extra curricular activities, and even the people you associate with.
What’s your objective? Defining your objective helps you focus on the building blocks required to successfully take you from your freshman year to graduation to a promising career (this also makes your parents happy, as you will graduate on time and end up costing them less money).
Missing Pieces
If you don’t declare your major, you may take alot of classes and feel like you know alot of “stuff”, but none of it will lead to an actual career (last time I checked, “career students” didn’t get paid very well).
If you just take classes with no goal in mind, you will be missing pieces of your education. This will mean additional semesters, which will lead to added years of college – a college education doesn’t come cheap, so unless you have money to waste, this also means more money will be spent trying to “figure it out as you go along”. The same situation can be applied to your website.
Strategically Speaking
If you have a website with no objective and therefore no strategy, to put it bluntly, you are wasting your money.
With no strategy, your web presence is floundering around in “cyberspace” with no real purpose - it’s just kinda “there”. It may be a place you can refer existing customers to, but if they’re already your customers – unless your website is a customer service tool – why are you sending them to your website if they already know you?
Set Goals
Goals are important, they make you aware of how people use your site and give you the opportunity to adjust the strategy to meet their expectations.
What do you want people to do once they find your site? Do you have something to sell? Do you want them to contact you, visit a specific page, learn something, download a PDF? Is there a way for you to stay in contact with them? Do you want them to return – are you giving people a compelling reason to come back to your site?
If there are no goals in place, then there are no goals for your users to accomplish, no conversions to track, and no way of measuring the success of your website…if you can’t measure the success of your website, what’s the point?
Think ROI
Many people build websites with no strategy and then they wonder why it didn’t work – it may look nice, but where’s the growth? Why isn’t it bringing more leads? Why isn’t it generating sales? Why aren’t there more revisits to the site? Where’s my return on investment?
A web strategy is an investment and it will show you a return - its primary focus is on an objective tied to your business goals, whether that be making money, creating awareness, changing minds, or encouraging involvement.
Join us for lunch at the RSA Interactive Marketing luncheon!
I’m posting a quick update to let everyone know that we will be presenting an interactive marketing seminar over lunch from 11:30am-1:00pm on September 9th at the Howard Johnson Inn & Suites in Rapid City, SD. Whew… that was a mouth full.
Kyle, Natalie and myself will be talking about web marketing for small business – why you need it and how you can use it.
“You don’t have to do everything, just do something.” -Robert Sharp
The registration deadline was September 1st. If you’re reading this and it is after September 1st but you still want in or would like to know more, please feel free to contact us – comment, email or call 605-341-5226.
***We’re putting together a re-cap of our September 9th interactive marketing presentation to be posted by September 11. Check back for the followup.***
As a business owner or marketer, you’re always taking steps to stay ahead of the competition in a marketplace that’s always changing. The web is no different; it’s always changing as well.
Businesses online must keep up with the constant changes in web technology, trends, and techniques, or be left far behind very quickly.
As for your website, you need to take dozens of constantly-changing elements into account that will, at some point, affect the value of your web presence and the viability of your business online. Here are nine.
1. A “brochure-style” website is good enough.
This hasn’t been true for almost a decade. Competition on the web is stiff, and you’ll have a hard time maintaining a successful website if it’s a purely static, online “brochure.”
Instead, you should be constantly updating your content to reflect changes in your business or organization, your market, technology, and the needs or desires of your customers and website users.
Further, your content should be configured or “optimized” to cater to your specific market. We call this search engine optimization (SEO).
2. Websites should contain as much information as possible.
While placing every bit of content you have on your website may seem logical, it can actually hinder the user experience and reduce conversions. If you have a very well-designed website, you may not have a problem offering a lot of content. But this sort of design takes not only good visual communication skills (read: graphic design, information architecture), but also a well-thought-out content strategy.
Anything less and you run the risk of publishing a website that’s bloated, slow, overwhelming to the user, or ineffective for search.
3. The “home” page is the entry page.
This may have been true at some point, but it isn’t anymore. Most website traffic comes from search engines, and any given search can bring up any page of your website – not just the homepage. So a visitor can come to your website through almost any page.
But realize this is a good thing! It helps you better understand your website traffic; who is entering your website, where did they enter, and why. Then you can better structure your website and content to better serve these visitors.
4. “Intro” animations or “splash” pages are awesome.
With sincerest apologies to anyone I ever built a splash screen for: no, they are not awesome. They are clumsy and superfluous, and as a visitor to your website I can assure you they do not add anything positive to my experience of your content, but simply get in the way.
5. The focus of my website is me and my stuff.
Wrong. The focus of your website is the visitor, and how they experience it. Does that seem backwards to you? It shouldn’t.
This shift in focus has been a long time coming. It’s changed the way we do almost everything on the web, whether content structure, navigation layout, page layout, graphic design – it’s even changed the way we analyze web statistics.
So keep this in mind when thinking about your website: it’s all about the user.
6. “Click here to see more!”
Again, we’re more than a decade into this era – do we really need to tell people to click? I mean, assuming you’ve provided some form of differentiation for links (i.e. underlined, blue, bold), there isn’t really a reason to tell people they have to click it.
There are, however, several reasons not to, the most important being its affect on accessibility and SEO.
7. Welcome to our website!
When the web was young, each new person or organization to join up and publish content was overflowing with excitement. With all the ecstatic jubilation of a 4-year-old who’s just received a new playhouse, they proclaimed: “Welcome to our homepage!”
Alright, well…it’s a little played out, and a lot unnecessary. A better tactic would be to analyze what your current visitors find most important on your website, and highlight that in place of a welcome message.
8. “The Fold”
I remember 640 by 480 pixels. You know, the maximum screen resolution on those tiny computer displays we all had at the dawn of the Internet. Boy, those are long gone now aren’t they?
Well “The Fold” isn’t quite extinct, but it certainly isn’t as important a consideration as it was.
“The Fold,” by the way, is a metaphor drawn from newsprint where content of supreme importance was placed on the top half of the front page, “above the fold,” so as to be immediately visible to readers or passers-by. Likewise content of great importance should be placed “above the fold” on the website – that is, above the bottom of the browser window.
The problem is we have so many different screen sizes now, it’s difficult to identify exactly where the “fold” is. Further, we’re over a decade into the “web” era – I think most of us are accustomed to a bit of scrolling.
9. Because I can!
Just because you can doesn’t mean you should. Yes, you can add a hit counter to your site. Yes you can make text blink, or add scrolling marquee, or animated GIFs and clipart. But think for a second: are you adding it just because you like it or think it’s “cool”?
What about your target audience (see number 5)? Is their experience improved or made worse by the addition of these things?
Look, would you base a marketing campaign decision involving TV/radio/print (read: $$$$) on something as shallow as “because I like it”? No? Then why would you do it online? This is all part of your marketing effort, so your decisions should be based on strategic goals and research.
You do have strategic goals for your website, don’t you?
So there’s only nine out of dozens; clearly there are a lot more. But if you think I missed any big ones, let me know in the comments. I’d love to hear what others think about this topic.
Most of us who are active in social web spaces (i.e. Twitter, Facebook, etc.) do it privately – that is to say, we’re engaging online with friends and family. But what if you’re doing it for a business? How should you present yourself?
It can be difficult to know where to draw the line between the personal and professional when dealing with brands, vendors, clients, customers, etc. After all, you are YOU, and though you may represent your organization, you’re still a person. And people engage with other people.
Look, I “tweet” personal stuff all the time. Granted, I’m not the principle of the organization, or even a high-level operative (so to speak). So although I do represent my company to a degree, I’m safe from being seen as “the company voice.” Not so, for others. Being seen as the representative of the organization can put you in a tight spot where the line between personal and professional gets a little blurry.
But this is why I’m always talking about strategy (for those of you I have actually spoken to). Dipping into social media just to experiment is fine – in fact, a good idea. When you start to get serious, though, you need to step back and take the strategic perspective. It’s within this view you’ll be able to answer the question “Where’s the line between personal and professional?”
Because it really comes down to how you plan to engage the social web. If your plan is to present a corporate voice maintained by multiple team members, the line is drawn well within the “professional” space. If you plan to just be You, who happens to work for Company A, the personal element should and will naturally spring to the surface.
On to The Good Stuff
Keeping in mind this all depends on your objective and strategic approach, here are some basic tips for keeping that balance between the personal and professional in any social web space.
1. Don’t over-disclose. Pretend you are talking to a customer. In other words, keep it on a professional level, even if the content is more about you, personally, than the business.
2. Careful what you say. Political/religious content can offend your customers. Unless the issue directly affects your business, pass on it (as opposed to “pass it on”). Again, pretend you’re talking to a customer in the store or on the phone.
3. Don’t get carried away. “Personal” is good in moderation, and if it’s still useful somehow. “I’m eating a turkey wrap” isn’t useful or even interesting. “This is the best turkey wrap I’ve ever had – got it from [some restaurant] in [some place] – try it out!” might be both.
4. Be prepared to engage. If you post or tweet personal content (or anything else, really), you may get replies. If you ignore or walk away from it, you’ve missed an opportunity. Once again, pretend you’re talking to customers. Expect questions, and answer them. Have conversations!
5. Don’t have conversations. Wait, what? “Kyle is contradicting himself again,” you say? Yeah, sorta. What I mean to say is don’t hold long public discussions about personal things. If you do want to have such a conversation with someone, take it to private messages, email or instant messaging. The rest of your audience will thank you.
So there are some loose guidelines for keeping that personal/professional balance. Hope this is helpful to those of you just starting out, and if I left anything out please post it below in the comments. Thanks!
