The Real Bruce

I have one simple thought for today. If you are going to venture into the world of social media, whether it be Facebook, Twitter, or your flavor of choice, make sure you have a plan.

These days, almost everyone expects you to have a presence on these networks, but if you don’t have a plan, it is worse than not being there at all.

I recently had dinner at a local restaurant. When the service didn’t go as well as I would have liked, I decided to fill out the new “comment card” and post something on the restaurant’s Facebook page. I was going to use Twitter, but unfortunately, they didn’t have a Twitter account.

I made a simple post about my dissatisfaction and waited to get a response. I did eventually get one three days later. I am very happy with the end result, and the Manager did a wonderful job in making things up to me. He won a fan back by his phone call and email.

In talking with him, he did reveal to me that he was struggling with social media and wasn’t sure of the etiquette or how to respond to comments. This is my point. If you are not sure what to do or how to do it, hold off on getting started. Get some advice, make a plan, and then make the leap.

If I would not have been able to find this company on Facebook, I would have asked to speak with the Manager right then. He would have been able to solve the problem, and that would have been the end of it.

By opening his restaurant up to the social world, he is taking on the responsibility of managing that part of his business as well. He must react in a timely fashion and make sure he doesn’t miss anything that is posted about his business.

Last week, Gigaom.com posted an article titled, “Facebook Driving More Traffic Than Google,” that I found very interesting. While there are many stipulations to their research, the fact remains more and more traffic is being generated by the “social web,” and business need to adapt to this thought process.

Think about it. How many times each day do you log into Facebook or Twitter and see one of your friends or followers commenting on a story or sending out a link to something interesting? What do you do? You click on it because you want to check it out, too. After all, your friend thought it was important enough to share. This is all part of the social web.

As I look at analytics each day for my clients, I see the same reflection. Search traffic isn’t necessarily down, but referral traffic is way up for almost every client. Where are these referrals coming from? In almost every case….social networks.

This is why it is so important to make your site social. Can visitors subscribe to a feed of your news? Do you have buttons that allow them to share your content on their social sites? Can they email interesting articles to friends or coworkers? These are just a few of the ways you can make your web site more social.

Now I am sure you found this blog post extremely interesting, so go ahead and click the “ShareThis” button below this post and share it with your friends.

Last weekend I had the opportunity to go see Jerry Seinfeld perform. Before the show I wanted to get some more information about his tour, and what his routine is about now. What I discovered is that “the master of his domain” does not own a domain at all or have any Internet marketing strategy of any kind. This got me thinking, does the most successful comedian of all time really need to have a Website strategy?

Seinfeld seems to be a perfect fit for today’s social media and marketing trend. He makes short observations that his audience finds hilarious. Wouldn’t that be perfect for something like…Twitter? It is what Twitter was made for. If he used it properly he could be one of the most followed people around.

Facebook was my next stop. Of course I found a multitude of Seinfeld pages, but all of them were run by fans and not by the comedian himself. Why would Jerry not want to allow his fans to follow him and see what he is up to on a daily basis?

While attending the show I got a few of my answers. Seinfeld doesn’t really like the connected world we live in. He seemed to understand texting, but confessed he doesn’t do it. He knew about iPhones, but explained he just wants a basic phone and still uses one from years ago. Its no wonder then he doesn’t understand Social media advertising or the Internet Marketing Benefits.

After the show I asked myself this question, “In today’s social media world, if someone like Seinfeld doesn’t get on board, will he become a forgotten star sooner than those who do.” Will kids today remember Dane Cook, because they can download his material on iTunes? Will Seinfeld reruns be over taken by reruns of The Office, because that show has embraced social media advertising?

I guess time will tell. I could go on and on, but yada, yada, yada, I need to get to work.

Post your feedback on this, I would love to hear what you think.