Social Media: it’s time we all got it.
What an exciting time to be in our business! Over the past few years we (Moxy and Wild Imaginations Inc.) have been very fortunate to work with some great clients, learn a ton about communications and brand development, and be a part of some exciting developments in business—both our own business growth and our clients’.
But there’s even better things on the horizon, and we’re just waking up to it now. It’s best to bring this discussion in the first person: not “we” Moxy Productions Inc. / MOXY Webworks, but me, Jesse Collins, owner-operator, chief-cook-and-bottle-washer, and author of this post. That’s because this discussion is as much about the distillation of business communications as it is about increasing reach and building community around what we do, or what we sell, or what service we provide.
First, the idea of doing any of this stems from believing in what we do. As a provider of a product or service, we start by being evangelists for what we create. Everything I’ve ever done in my life has come from absolute belief in being happy, from the belief that I would rather be a success at something I love than a failure at something I hate. From leaving the University of Toronto to become an actor, which led me into the most engaging and satisfying performance career I could’ve hoped for, from wanting to learn about directing—again, a passion that I still enjoy—to wanting to build a business (read: make my living from) working with the communications and the internet. So here I am. Engaged in learning every day, all because I left an institution of learning to pursue something that people thought was unattainable. That’s ironic.
So believing in what we do becomes the foundation for how we successfully use this vast, evolving mass of tools and techniques that are being generated every second of every day on the internet. Of late, Social Media has become so important that it can no longer be ignored by companies that believe in what they do. It’s not a passing fancy, it’s not a diversion for people playing little games on their computer. It is a legitimate place where people expect to share information and engage in conversation with their friends, with strangers and with brands. Yes, engage in conversation with brands.
Perhaps the best example of this is Twitter. Twitter is a service that allows users to send updates or “tweets”: text-based posts, up to 140 characters long to the Twitter website quickly and easily, from the web, from Facebook, or even from your phone.
Updates are instantly delivered to other users who have signed up to receive them (people who “follow” you) as well as to the public stream. Users can receive updates via the Twitter website, instant messaging, SMS, RSS, email or through an application.
I joined Twitter a little over a year ago. Admittedly, at first I didn’t get it. It felt like a distraction I didn’t need. I should be writing and talking and building and working, I thought, not watching this stream of people’s tweets go by.
But gradually, I started connecting with and following people in the same business as us, and people with the same interests. I started to notice that folks were using these short posts to communicate valuable ideas, share links to important blog posts, and even just to make each other feel better in an increasingly hostile and mean-spirited world (i.e. American Idol and society’s new craving for harsh criticism of people who do things out of joy). And I wasn’t the only one.
Twitter has grown exponentially, to the point that it can barely handle it. They are currently trying to shore up the system to handle the millions of users that have flocked to it. And it’s being used creatively, engagingly, and successfully, by people and businesses alike.
But the internet shows this better than I can. In this interview of Amy Worley from H&R Block By Rodney Rumford of www.Facereviews.com, see how a massive company uses it to engage with its customers.