I use Twitter a lot. I have many people I communicate with regularly. Lately, I’ve thought about the impact of social media on my life and on many of our lives. I cannot tell you the way my life has changed due to blogging, twittering, Facebook and various other social networks.
I have gotten work as a result of my blog, I have future pending work as a result of both my blog and Twitter, I have friendships that will last a lifetime as a result, as well.
I had a conversation on Saturday on Twitter with a person who didn’t seem to get it. I made the point that if I called a company to complain and I felt they weren’t listening or accessible, that would turn me off to that company. A successful business needs to be listening to their client base and responding to what the needs are, on multiple levels.
The perpetual question is this: Is there value in all of this noise or is this just a lot of playing around?
My friend Randall boils it down like this:
The case is simple. There are lots of people and lots of opportunity.
He goes on to say:
Doing business on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and other social networks are obvious opportunities for both local and global markets. It is also a necessity in today’s society to be connected to your customers. These networks are that opportunity.
So, tonight, I get a call from a guy from church. He kind of bounces between being a sound guy and a musician and he tells me that the uStream.tv video stream that we recorded Sunday is asking for a password. I checked it myself and it was fine, I got right in. I happened to mention this on Twitter, not to degrade uStream.tv or even to raise an issue. I simply stated I think my friend may have an issue on his end. When I got home, a few minutes ago and happened to check my replies on Twitter, I saw that @uStreamSupport tweeted at me and said that was a known issue and asked for screen shots. Wow, that’s responsive! Way to go, uStream.tv! I emailed my friend and asked for screenshots.
Go to our stream from last Sunday and see if it comes up without issue. If you get a login screen or anything else out of the ordinary, comment and I’ll send you an email and you can send me a screenshot, which I will send on to uStream.
Social networking is powerful, especially if you learn the ins and outs of it and leverage it’s power.
Excellent points, Jim. I know that several people in my company follow some of our customers’ tweets. I don’t really have the time to devote to that and limit my scope quite a bit. I have enough distractions as it is without adding something else that would greatly fragment my time/attention.
Checked the URL – no issues for me, though I had my sound turned up a bit and got hit by that chord.
My biggest issue is that I can see the potential in social networking, but don’t really want to invest a whole lot of extra time in that. It’s hard to strike the right balance. I also know that I need to spend more time actually blogging (like just doing it once a week would be an improvement). I haven’t so far. May be worth just starting, even if I don’t have much to say.
Thanks for the thoughts, Jim. Time to do some more introspection.
Good post!
I agree that new social networking tools are essential for remaining connected to your customer base. This could be for businesses, schools, non-profits (including churches), etc.
I am pleased to see that Ustream was so responsive. That shows they care about their reputation/image among users and potential users.
BTW, I tweeted you to let you know your stream works fine! ;-D