You’ve got a Facebook profile, claimed your business on Google Maps and Foursquare, and you may even have a Twitter account. So far, your businesses is well situated to use the internet and social platforms to generate business and raise awareness of your brand.
But there is one other platform where your business is absent: Blogs.
The natural inclination of businesses is that blogs are time-consuming and labor-intensive. I won’t dispute that — blog posts require time and effort to write and publish.
But the benefits to maintaining a company blog are considerable. Consider the following:
Talking about how great new innovations in social media are, is fun and easy. You can do this and you can do that. Isn’t it great?
More often, however, the difficulty comes in when trying to explain in clear terms what the benefit of these new social platforms is to business. Businesses want to know: What’s in it for me, how can we use it and how long will it take to see results.
Each of those questions is tough to answer definitively, because a certain amount of trail-and-error is required to know for sure.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg introduces Facebook Places
Last week Facebook debuted their latest product, a geolocation feature called Facebook Places. In the months leading up to the formal announcement, there was a lot of talk that Facebook was developing it, just no-one from the company would say so in any official capacity.
At the moment it is only available to Facebook users who have the iPhone application. Users had to download the latest update in order to get the new Places feature, which now appears directly in the middle of the menu screen on the application.
I had the opportunity to begin using the new feature on Thursday last week, while out with friends. We visited a few different locations, so I was able to try a few things out.
Today Pace Communications released a breakdown of where most of the major grocery store chains in the U.S. stand with regard to total number of followers on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr.
The results were surprising in part because it painted a clear picture of how little this industry has invested in social, outside of major players such as WalMart and Target.
While the retail and food service industries have been quick to jump into social media, food retail (grocery stores, etc) appear to be more hesitant.
One of the side benefits of businesses using social media is that it requires some maintenance by actual human beings. For every business, this presents an opportunity. Whomever is managing your company’s social media efforts could become the face of your brand or company online.
The above screen grab is of Scott Monty’s Twitter account. Scott is the head of social media engagement for Ford Motor Company. Other than CEO Allan Mullaly, Scott is the the most recognizable “face” of Ford, because that’s how Ford positioned him to be.
Corporations and brands tend to be faceless organizations: The only humans that customers interact with are the ones they meet in brick-and-mortar locations, or via customer service. Social media presents an opportunity for companies and brands to humanize themselves. It goes towards perception, trust and ultimately, comfort.
