“Everyone needs to be involved in social media. A Twitter account is a must.” Really?
There’s a lot of buzz about social media at the moment. It’s new(ish) to a lot of people, and there really aren’t many people out there who know all that much about it. (Although there are a lot of people who’ll tell you they know it all. And charge you a lot of money to tell you.) Why do I think this? Well, for one thing, as I’ve already said, it’s pretty new. Compared to traditional media anyway. And the trouble with newish technology is that it tends to go through an ‘Everyone has to have it because it’s the best thing ever’ phase. Until the next best thing ever. And that, I think, is the phase we’re currently in. There are hundreds of sites telling you about how important it all is, how to “Streamline your Twitter strategy” or whatever. And in my opinion, most of it’s bollocks. Why? Because nobody really knows yet. We don’t know how to use it best, we don’t know why we should use it, or even if (gasp) every business actually needs a social media strategy.
I would suggest that most people who are using Twitter for business are getting very little, if not nothing at all out if it. It’s a waste of their time. But they do it because they think they should. Because everyone else is. Same with Facebook, Linkedin et al. And it’s not because they haven’t “Streamlined their strategy.” IT’S BECAUSE SOCIAL MEDIA IS WRONG FOR THEM.
Just as television advertising is wrong for some companies, and direct mail might not be the right approach, so it is with social media. It’s not the be all and end all, it doesn’t magically increase sales and revenue, IT’S JUST A TOOL. Just one tool in a very large box. And you don’t use a spanner to bang in a nail.
Having said all that, used in a creative and innovative way, this particular tool can be a very very effective one. I’ve recently seen two excellent examples of using Twitter to generate either sales or traffic.
The first was by an illustrator called Johanna Basford who creates beautiful, intricate illustrations. She came up with a project called TwitterPicture. In her words: To get involved, all you had to do was tweet Johanna what you would like to see included in her drawing and she would draw each and every twitter suggestion (except anything deemed too rude for innocent eyes!). So be it a pirate ship, a yeti footprint, a medieval castle or a Venus fly trap, all the twitter suggestions were translated into pen and ink to create an eclectic snap shot of Twitter imaginations over a 2 day period.
She broadcast this process live with updated photos on her blog, and it generated a massive amount of interest and publicity. She then sold 100 limited edition prints of the finished drawing through her website. It was an excellent use of Twitter, it made fantastic use of the connective and inclusive nature of the thing and it resulted in real sales, huge positive PR and a lot of fun too. As well as a lovely image (which looks great on the wall in my lounge.)
The second example is from
Graphic Design Forums. It’s simple, but effective. They’re running a competition for the forum members to win, among other things, the brand new Adobe CS5 suite. How do you enter? Just tweet the competition or mention it in your blog. So the site gets increased traffic, and I assume increased ad revenue, and the members get the chance to win a excellent prize.
I’m sure there are loads of other examples of social media done well, but there are hundreds more of it being done badly, or worse still, done blindly. I’m not saying it’s not got its uses. Just that it’s not quite as important as many people would have you believe.
