Do it right or don’t do it at all
I decided recently that I would like to have a Pimm’s party. So off I went hunting for some promo gear as I already own one Pimm’s jug, but because of the exchange rate and the price of postage, buying everything from the UK and having it shipped here was stretching what I was willing to pay.
So naturally, like any modern netizen would, I took to Twitter to get my problem solved and asked them if I could get any promotional gear locally in Australia. (I thought this would be simple as Diageo the owner of Pimm’s, is not only present in Australia but they own a distilling company in my home town) The response was not what I expected…
Hello??? is anybody out there?
The reason their response was unexpected is because it was non-existent. I literally got no acknowledgement that I had reached out to the company. That’s fairly unimpressive, particularly for a company like Diageo (the owners of Pimm’s), which isn’t exactly some small local outfit.
So my question now is: why do they even have a Twitter account? It’s as though they’ve never read or been told anything about social media and how it’s a conversation, not a broadcasting platform. It’s expected these days that any reputable brand has a social media presence, and the best even have separate accounts for customer service, marketing, and other aspects of customer outreach.
If You’re Gonna Do it…
There are any number of platitudes and sayings that could be invoked here, but the bottom line is the same: doing things partially is often worse than not doing them at all. I would argue that social media falls squarely into that line of thinking when it comes to businesses.
People on social media have certain expectations when it comes to brands, as I’ve already pointed out. If a brand doesn’t have a presence, it’s actually more forgivable than having a worthless presence. When consumers want to reach out to a brand and find that they aren’t active on social media, they’ll just fall back to email or telephone communications.
But when the brand does have a social media presence, that’s how social consumers are going to contact them. When it turns out that their account is more of a placeholder than a functioning channel, the public’s impression of the brand drops quickly. They expect an answer on social media, and they expect it quickly. Isn’t that part of the point in using Facebook and Twitter?
The bottom line that I want to get across here is that if you’re going to use social media in your business, do it well. Otherwise, what you thought was a clever marketing move can turn out to be a major downside for your business. An unused or underused account simply appears as laziness or apathy, two qualities you don’t want to project to your clients and potential audience.
