Social Media Communication - How to Make it Work for You

This past weekend was our high school reunion.   As part of the celebrations we had the honour of a performance by two of our alumni, Don and Dave Carroll, also known as Sons of Maxwell.

I’ve known Dave personally since our high school days so I always look forward to getting a chance to talk to him whenever he and Don come home.  This year, I didn’t have a chance to talk to him because he was so busy selling his new book, aptly called “United Breaks Guitars”.  Dave’s musical career got an unexpected boost in 2009 when communication between him and United Airlines prompted him to communicate in a new and different way.  This story has been told thousands of times, but I’ll just do a quick recap.  In 2008, Don and Dave and their band mates were travelling to Nebraska for a performance via United Airlines.  United Airlines subsequently broke Dave’s beloved Taylor guitar but refused to help him in any way.  After months of arguing with them, he did what he know how to do best.  He wrote a song.  In fact he wrote 3 songs.  He produced a video for the first one and put it on Youtube.  Not expecting much to happen with it, he was shocked to see how quickly the video (which incidentally had been produced on an almost non-existent budget) was gaining attention.  With the promise to United Airlines that he would write 3 songs, Dave wrote and produced the final 2 songs and posted them on Youtube within several months of the original video.  Since that time, the videos have had 12,310,382 hits, 1,533,940 hits and 533,663 hits respectively.  For the whole story in Dave’s words, visit his website at http://www.davecarrollmusic.com/music/ubg/story/.

Youtube is the most widely used search engine in the world.  Owned by Google, Youtube generates in excess of 2 billion hits every day!!  So, you can only image how Youtube videos can have an impact on your business.  Of course, a lot of Youtube videos are funny animals or babies doing silly things, kind of like “America’s Funniest Home Videos”.  And you do hear of the occasional “discovery” like Justin Bieber, but that’s very rare.  However, it really is possible to use Youtube along with other social media to create a buzz around your company. 

The key to using social media is remembering that you are still communicating with customers.  Social media is not a one-way street.  Our current generation uses social media and text messaging to communicate.  A generation ago, it was the telephone.  Before that it was written letters and telegrams. I’m sure I’m going to offend some people here by saying this, so I apologize in advance.  But here’s my opinion on people who say they are “social media experts”.  That is like saying you’re a “telephone expert”.   Social media is a form of communication and you need to have proper etiquette in that forum the same way you do on the telephone. 

So, when using social media,

·         Be polite
·         Develop 2-way dialogue with your customers and communicate regularly but not to the point of being a pest.  Nobody wants to get overloaded with stuff online the same way people don’t want to get a hundred phone calls from you in a week. 
·         Use appropriate social media sites.  There are so many sites out there but if your customers aren’t using them, why bother?
·         Allow people to get to know you. Show your personality. Dave’s videos show his personality.  Let your personality come through and you too will build a fan base of your own.

We may not all have the YouTube success that Dave Carroll has had, but that doesn’t mean social media won’t work for your business.  Follow the tips I’ve given you and watch your fanbase grow too.