EyeSee

Happy New Year I hope you took time to eat drink and be merry. 2009 was a challenging year for many with the economic crisis still having it’s effects on businesses. This year should be better for everyone.

As a social media strategist I find that customers generally ask the same questions. During the course of the year I will be answering these questions. The biggest one that I will discuss today is the business case for participating in social media.

My answer to that is that it is no longer “should we participate” but how should we participate. Or communications mix has increased significantly since the old days.  We now have

• print – newspapers, trade publications, magazines
• radio
• TV
• website
• micro sites – site for a specific product or promotion
• social networks – Facebook, LinkedIn
• micro blogs – Twitter, Identi.ca
• video sharing – YouTube, Vemio, Blip.tv
• photo sharing – Flickr
• wiki – pb works, Tiki wiki, media wiki

As a communicator it’s now a challenge to pick the right channels to participate in. Although most of these are free your time or your employees’ time isn’t. There is no one tool and it’s usually a combination of tools that are needed in order to communicate effectively.

Communication can be internal within an organization (intranet) or externally. If it’s external communication then it’s easy however if you are interested in internal communications then Facebook, YouTube, Flickr are not the appropriate channels for you.  There are open source and commercial applications that enable you to achieve the same goals.

So what facts do I have to back my claim? Just take a look at your habits at work and in your personal lives.

• How many emails do you get per day? How many of them are directly related to what you are doing vs spam?
• How much mail do you get? How much of it do you read vs put in the recycle?
• Where do you spend your spare time? Is it online playing games, looking at videos, photos etc…

The answers to this is pretty simple we have way too much stuff to read whether it’s email, bills, letters etc. therefore we are very good at filtering. So then as a business who needs to communicate externally with customers or internally with employees how do you get your message through?

It’s through use of these social media tools, photos, video and audio.

I will leave you with this.   Pepsi Skips the Super Bowl, Spends on Social Media Instead!!!!