An employee told me about an article he saw in the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle about a local competitor that's embraced social media. So, I went to check it out.
I tried to find the article on the D&C's website first, but no dice. The link was broken. I could find the headline through a simple Google search, but every time I hit the D&C site I got an error message.
Okay, that's not my competitor's fault. So, I figured I'd head over to their website to see what they've been doing with social media. I was really interested because I'm working hard to learn how to leverage social media for my company and my clients. I thought I might learn a thing to two.
Wow, what a surprise!
The site is the same one they've had since the early 2000's—same design, same content and all the copy is actually gif files. No text, which means it's not Google freindly. Even more surprisingly, there's no blog, no rss feed, no place for visitors to leave public comments. All I could find was a tiny Facebook icon at the bottom each page. Where's the social media?
I jumped over to their FB fan page. It had a couple contests to increase the number of Facebook fans and there were a couple of picture albums. That's it. Again, where's the social media?
Look, we aren't social media experts here at BWC. We're learning, just like everyone else. We are expert problem solvers, we know communication design like nobody's business and we know marketing. Social media is new, growing and it's exciting. We're using it, just like millions of people do every day. But, we're not selling ourselves as experts. Not yet.
Maybe my competitor's website is suffering from the same problem that the cobbler's children suffer from—papa's so busy making shoes for everyone else that the kids go barefoot. I'd like to believe that's the case. But, often there's too much sizzle in our industry and not enough substance.
We're good at image and look. We know how to get attention, to promote and to get noticed. That's what our clients pay us to do! But, I think we as an industry suffer at times because of it. It's too easy to promote yourself as something you're not and when that happens it's the clients that suffer.
Here's a tip, and it applies to every sort of marketing expert you'll meet, including social media types: Ask them how they will measurably achieve your goals, like driving revenues, increasing memberships or growing donations.
Creating buzz, adding followers, encouraging conversations and all the rest are useless unless you can tie them to your goals. If a person can show you how they will deliver on your goals, you've got a bona fide expert. Hire them.
