The Teckki Says

Over the years businesses and organizations have flirted or experimented with a number of social networking sites. From bulletin boards and chat rooms to Facebook and Twitter, electronic networking has evolved from the technical proficient to the what-did-we-do-without-it world. I've been to many packed seminars where excited evangelists preach the benefits as if they were holding tent rallies. "This will revolutionize your business and increase your sales," or "this is how you reach the next generation," they bark. With audiences filled with first-time entrepreneurs, continuing technophobes, and outright Luddites, messages like these resonate. With less cash and more work as the result of flattened organizations, many of us are looking for anything, a spark, gold nuggets, any lead that will get us to the next day and beyond.

Is social media our savior?

The quick answer is no.

The long answer is that is probably part of the solution.

I, like many of you, have dabbled if not delved head first into social media, with varying degrees of success. Some mediums, like email marketing and blogging, I am a devotee. Others are still in various degrees of experimentation, amusement and outright indifference. Some will eventually be integrated, others ignored. Still others presumably have potential, but it is not yet obvious from a business sense to me. To the preachers in those churches, I continue to sit in the pews, appreciating the message, but I remain firmly among the unconverted.

This does you no good.

In following posts, I will present articles with interviews of people from businesses and organizations who are using social media to enhance their communication and marketing efforts. I know that most of you have tried or want to try some or all of the various social networking media, and many of you have experienced many varying degrees of success or failure. Some of you have found it a huge boost to your efforts. Others have quit too soon.

Over the next several months, I will cover social mediums of main concern - Facebook, Constant Contact, Linked-In, YouTube, Flickr and others. Some of these stories will come from people just like you. Others will come from you.

I invite your questions, comments and thoughts. In many cases, you are more of an expert than you think. Most of us don’t have the zeal of an evangelist and we tend to fence-sit rather than become part of the flock. However, an enthusiastic congregant is someone we can relate to, the person who can help us make the choice by being an example we can relate to. You can be the witness someone needs to walk down the aisle and commit their lives to the conversion.

Then the real work begins. Enjoy the articles.

In a series of articles exploring the use of social media for businesses and organizations, this first one will cover Facebook.

Have you used or are you using Facebook for business?

I interviewed a couple of business persons who I knew used Facebook in their businesses. While I’ve heard the stories we’ve all heard of successfully lucrative connections and the potential to reach millions, the stories I am hearing from many main street businesses is a mixed bag of results. Are businesses better for trying and using social networking media? Yes, and I say that emphatically. Are they better off? While the recession has been obscuring the picture somewhat, many whom I talk to always wish for better results.

Darryl Crawford, owner of Kimbark Coin Laundry in Chicago, has been using Facebook since the Fall of 2009, and has over 150 fans on Kimbark Coin Laundry’s fan page. He has found that the experience has been mixed. "You have to go out and do other things. You have to drive people to your website, then hit them with product [sales. Facebook is] still used for social," says Crawford. Although he’s not sure how much business it has brought in, he realizes that his venture with Facebook has a long way to go, "We're like pioneers trying to figure it out," he says.

Sid Barsuk, of Barsuk Group, Inc, has been a Facebook user for about a year. While he is not actively promoting his business on Facebook, he has had remarkable results. He began his experiences into social networking as purely social, starting out with Classmates.com, connecting with old friends. He eventually to migrated to Facebook. About a year ago, he was contacted by a former student of his Facebook regarding a project.

Barsuk, who is active in the Chicago Southland Chamber of Commerce, pursued this as a chamber project at first. At some point, Barsuk and his former student discussed other areas in they could collaborate, and a contact was drawn up. He's been working on the project since mid-August. If it goes forward, it will mean significant business for Barsuk Group, Inc.

Barsuk is obviously enthusiastic about Facebook. "What do you have to lose? It doesn't cost anything but time and effort - it's one more avenue of getting out there," he says.

Crawford puts a perspective on all media that is worth taking note, "Your website should be the centerpiece," he says. He states that all other pieces, email marketing, Facebook, blogs and twitter, should draw people to it. It is a perspective typical of the way most marketing efforts work, traditional or digital. "Facebook will get people's attention. It won't do what many people expect," he says.

I believe that in general, we all know the difference between yelling "fire" around one or two people in an open field, and yelling "fire" in a crowded theater. What I am not so convinced is that whether we know if we are in an open field or a crowded theater. A recent post on my Facebook account bears this out.

A friend of mine, who has a gazillion friends on a social networking site which I am one of, expressed an exasperation many of us city dwellers have - an inconsiderate neighbor who allows his pooch to potty on or near my friends' property. In Chicago, where we both reside, this is not only inconsiderate, it is illegal. However, my friend creates a post that I will be kind enough to describe as a hypothetical question: what if the pooch expires from a premature, poisoned death?

By the time I got to the post, there were a number of answers, many expressing the same frustration, if not outright goading to follow through. I'm sure my friend meant no harm, and in some way is blowing off steam. However, on social media sites where you have gazillion friends, you are not conversing with two people in an open field, you are speaking to a crowded theater.

Now, if the pooch ends up popped, who's the number one protagonist that the police will pursue (was that enough P's?). I would argue that suspects one through fifty are a part of that post. One might argue privacy, but electronic media, especially when issues are posted in such a public manner, erode the expectation of privacy, thus rights. For the commission and investigation of a crime, police have been granted broad powers, and innocent posts can become part of a broader net of evidence against someone.

It's been said a million times, and will be said a million more, be careful of what you post online. Even emails have limited protection because of the use of public lines to transmit messages from one person to another. If you would not say it in a crowded theater, think carefully about saying it online.

While we are all waiting to see the Big Game between New Orleans and Indianapolis, there's another battle of titans that's going on between electronic and the publishing industry with Amazon.com and Macmillan Publishing Company. Seems that Macmillan got tired of watching its first-run, New York Times best seller list books being sold on Kindles for $9.99, and felt the digital versions were worthy of a field-goal point price bump or better. When Amazon blocked the attempt, Macmillan took its ball (I mean its books) off the field. Amazon then decided it could not play the game without Macmillan. This was a nice goal-line stand by a publisher, but in the end, its' ball control strategy will fail, because Amazon, and a walk-on player named Apple, control the field. No one controls the clock, but it appears that time does not favor the publishing industry.

Maybe it takes a genius to understand that whoever controls the delivery system eventually controls the game, but that genius doesn't have to understand much. The publishing industry seems to think that it can dictate though content, and to some extent, it can. It may help to remember other titans who clashed with digital to see how the publishing industry will eventually fare.

The Music Industry. Who can forget, as they saw their business model fail so completely? They'd like you to believe that piracy more than anything eroded their industry. It might have been the train, but it rode a delivery system that the labels no longer owned, and couldn't control. When that didn't work, they thought that suing their customers was a road back to profitability. They were wrong.

The Print Industry, as defined by newspapers and magazines. They actually helped their own demise by putting their content online, made it free, and now want people to pay for it. If they were an ATM charging me to get to my money, their plan might work, but unless they all decide to make all of their content subscription at the same time (anti-trust and collusion laws would prevent this), they can kiss that dream goodbye.

The Motion Picture Industry. They have tried to pre-empt and modify the delivery system through devices, copy protection and legislation, but the net effect this could eventually have is to suppress the market, in the same manner the Digital Audio Tape player was killed by the protectionist music industry. The jury is still out on the Movie Industry, but music CD's once enjoyed a no-copy world before their demise (see earlier paragraph).

Macmillan's defensive stance may have kept Amazon from scoring points, and has no doubt emboldened other publishers to run up the score as well, as they are now pounding Amazon with their new ground game. Amazon punted, and Apple appears to also be giving up yardage as to not be burned by the big pass play.

For now, the Publishing Industry appears to be winning, and it would be great if the game was decided on downs or half-time scores. But holding or raising prices is like trying to keep a score tied. You eventually have to either get into the end-zone, or give up the ball. Because both Apple and Amazon sell more than books, there's a lot of time left on the clock, and they control the field.

This is the last of the series of What Your Website Should Have.

If, as an organization, you don’t have a website, you feel the heat of one question, "What is your website address?" Then there’s the mad rush to get a site, any site, that will allow you to avoid the further embarrassment of answering, "Uh, I don’t have one." However, in your panicked rush to get something up and going, usually on the cheap, you leave yourself open to having your site visitors ask another embarrassing question, "What’s the point?"

There is a song that my daughter and I really enjoy, Children's Story, by the Hip Hop artist Slick Rick. As a song, it is a wonderfully told bedtime story about a kid who is led down the path of crime and the consequences of that choice, with the moral of the song to stay straight. Its' poetic rhythm made it a favorite of ours. Although it is an old song, it recently prompted us to look up the video on You Tube. The song was so well written that it should have served as the script. I really emphasize SHOULD have, because in their efforts to put out the video, someone was rushed, lazy or clueless, as the video oftentimes barely resembled the song. Being a Hip Hop piece in the traditional sense, I guess the urge to inject scenes of sexual imagery and self aggrandizement were too much to overcome, rather than leaving it as a brilliantly-told story. It left me asking, "What's the point?"

Is THAT the question you want your website visitors and prospects to ask? Remember, the question you get asked is IF you have a website, not what's on it. You aren’t there to answer that question.
Maybe your in-person sales pitch is like that song – smooth, appealing and well done. We all have to blow our own horn to a live audience. If we hit the right notes, perhaps they will be impressed and want see the video, er, your website. If the two don’t match, I should not have to tell you what that means.

You get the point.