Conner's Blog

It is no secret that I love social media and the Internet.  Twitter and this blog are my playgrounds, with a few dashes to Facebook added for seasoning.  One thing that amazes me is the fact that people still think social media is going to ruin interpersonal communication in the real world.  This makes me cringe every time because the exact opposite has happened to me.

My love of social media really began during the political conventions leading up to the November 4, 2008 elections.  I didn’t have any friends at the time that would watch the speeches with me, so I logged onto Twitter and was suddenly bombarded by hundreds of people talking about what was happening.  The best part was that not only was I interacting with others watching from afar, but also getting first hand accounts from convention goers.  At the time, I had no idea how much of an impact Twitter would have on me, I just was having fun bashing politicians and discussing the issues with real people scattered all over the globe.

I believe it was sometime in January or February when Art and I had a conversation on Twitter and made a decision to meet at the Herkimer for happy hour.  Art was the first person I met who I had known exclusively through Twitter before meeting in real life.  Though he was not the first person I had met through the Internet, (I had joined a few meetup.com groups previously) he was the first person I met through an online social network.  Since then we have remained good friends.

Of course Art was just the beginning, in the last year or so, I’ve met a lot of people because of Twitter.  Some I met because they knew someone I met on Twitter, others I met only because they were on Twitter.  In fact, at last count, my In Real Life list has 89 members.  Some of these have only been meetings in passing, but many of them have involved fun times, great conversations, and a few have become close friends. Add at least a dozen people I’ve met who aren’t actually on Twitter and my social circle has been expanded by over 100 people just because of a little box saying “What are you doing?”

What I’m trying to say is, if anyone says our Internet connected networks are going to ruin our personal lives, destroy our ability to communicate, or stop us from meeting new people, well, they are crazy. Unless you are already an introvert and do not enjoy meeting new people, interacting online is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to social media.

I always enjoy browing the search terms that people use to get to my site, sometimes I wonder how far they had to dig to get here.  Here are a few funny samples I found this morning.

• Even surrounded by quotes, I didn’t know who this was: “jason lazarus “
• Best compound word ever: chiliwithbacon
• I’m uncertain as to what this was meant to find: conner back advices football
• I love this description of virtualization, I’m using it from now on: divide servers into seperate servers
• This had to be a disappointing result: proofread for the blog
• I don’t know quite what to say: skeleton of pocahontas, and the conners tweet
• My favorite has to be this one.  you can choose which specific emails you’d like to receive from by checking the boxes below to opt-out when you do not want to receive that type of email.

So what if I’m being lazy, it’s Friday and I’ve posted every day this week.  I hope you all have a great weekend and look forward to seeing you back next week.

1. Connect your employees with your customers.
   • The best thing about being a customer of a small business is getting to know the employees.  You can use a blog to accomplish this.  Let them write posts about their work day, give advice related to your business, or show off a recent success.  You can let them write as much as they want and moderate and post the best content.
   • You may be lucky and have employees that are excited to write  If you don’t though you can still get great content.  Pay your employees or reward them with gift cards for every post that is published.  Remember you control the publishing so they don’t just post stuff to just earn the incentive.
2. Let it go out as a newsletter
   • Many of your customers probably aren’t web savvy.  RSS and blogs are probably not something they are familiar with.  It’s trivial to setup a system that emails your latest posts to a list of permissive users.  Let them sign upand send it out at a pace they are comfortable with.
3. Don’t advertise
   • The worst thing you can do is turn your blog into a advertising mechanism.  If it’s well done it should be an advertisement in itself without being an advertisement.  Don’t promote your specials, “exciting new products”, or write other forms of sensationalism.  Your blog should be an attempt to leave the old ways of marketing behind.  So what should you write about.  Consider these options: how you choose a new product that fills your customers needs, the solution to a common problem your customers have, useful news from your industry, profiles of your employees or even your customers.
4. Don’t force it on anyone
   • This is a form of permissive marketing, it is not to be sold like a used car.  Put up a sign somewhere in your store that your customers can see, don’t have your sales people promote it.  The best marketing is spread by your customers.
5. Don’t feel forced into the standard blog format
   • You don’t need to write daily.  You don’t need to allow comments,  In fact, I would hesitate to allow them as an irate customers is more likely to comment then a content customer.  If you do allow comments, only allow customers to comment; having a sign up code on your receipts or invoices is a perfect way to accomplish this.
6. Do not let your marketing department or public relations department write your blog.
   • Most marketers will kill any chance it has of being fun.  Gimmicks, marketing slang, and PR spin is death to the personality your blog should develop.  Ask an employee to edit posts, but let your writers be themselves.  Marketing and PR will not let your employees passion for their jobs get through
7. Don’t let someone like me design your blog.
   • Hire a real designer and make sure your site looks professional.  If you can’t afford a designer find a template that is clean and can be customized to let your companies image take center stage.