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5 Things to Know to Get Customers to Your Online Community...and Keep Them There Download

Passing the Mic: How ampifying the voice of the consumer can add value to your organization Download

KristiGrigsby said:

With all the hoopla surrounding Twitter, I couldn’t resist the temptation to check it out. I took the plunge, albeit skeptical, and surfaced exactly where I had expected. Despite reading an abundance of reviews from Catharine Taylor's 'I'm all a-twitter' ravings to Rachel Happe's 'I love that Twitter has 140 characters or less. Love it, love it, love it!', I concluded that Twitter was a complete waste of my time.

My evaluation was based on some experimental following, and I quickly discovered things I didn’t want to know. I did not want to know, for example, that the reporter I'd been courting to cover a story was jumping on a hotel bed, dropping a strawberry on the floor, and in keeping with the five-second rule, picking it up and eating it.

And I figured that my time sitting in the airport awaiting a flight was better spent calling home to talk with my children than it was enlightening my network of ‘tweets’ that I was 'sitting in the airport waiting for a flight.' Who cares that I'm sitting here, who cares that I'm getting a cup of coffee...surely people have more interesting lives than that, right?

Admittedly, my conclusion was short-sided. Hadn’t I been reading of the growing reliance of Twitter among the influencers I spend my days trying to reach? Hadn’t I been learning that Twitter was quickly becoming a preferred means of communication for those receiving pitches – reporters who prefer to read through 140 characters as opposed to paragraphs of marketing speak (and really, who can blame them!)?

Although short-lived, my initial conclusion was based on the 'Chicken Little' philosophy, which focused on my needs and my own assessment that the sky was falling. When I began to see this new world from the outside, my mental state shifted dramatically. No longer content with sitting on the sidelines, I jumped into the game and began realizing the potential and discovering ways I could make ‘this Twitter thing’ work for my own business goals.

Recounting my experience has made me appreciate the wonderful irony in all of this. My initial tendency to dig in my heels and ‘not go there’ is exactly what the next wave of our social media customers is experiencing, fearing the worst if they open their doors to customer input or risk exposing their skeletons to the outside world.

In my own little way, I have realized what they too must realize: social media is not an option. We must find ways to engage our customers the way THEY want to be engaged…but in ways that keep the integrity (and profitability) of our business models intact. And that's what Neighborhood America is all about.

Posted: 5/29/2008 1:04:48 PM

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