Your business online - how well are you doing?
Monday, February 18th, 2008I was fortunate to meet Richard Stacy at a Social Media Cafe prototyping event before Christmas. He’d just left a top agency and was “repurposing” his former existence into a new format designed for corporate communications online. He described it as a journey of discovery.
Seems he’s come to some conclustions.
Read his excellent blog post on Social Media: four simple things every organisation needs to do
- Uncover your digital identity
- Create a credible story
- Start creating ‘off site’ digital content
- Create a space to engage with your stakeholders
This is a perfect summary of your online public profile as a business. If you are yet to make the switch (or develop a parallel online / offline programme) this is a fabulous guide. It’s also a very good “self-check” mechanism for your business development efforts.
Richard summarises
Ultimately, the most important thing to remember about this whole transparency issue is that trust is shifting from institutions to visible processes. Simply put, people will no longer take or trust what you say about yourself (your institutional claims to trust) at face value (even if it it true) - they will need to be able to understand the processes that guarantee this. The best way to do this is to create the opportunity for them to become part of this process. It is worth remembering that your harshest critic and most loyal customer or supporter are often the same person - provide them a channel for this energy and it is far more likely to be directed in a mutually positive direction.
Many agencies are TERRIBLE at developing their own online profile / persona. If you read their ‘who we are’ statements - they are virtually all the same….. and few have any backchannel where customers and staff can communicate in public.
Anyone brave enough to comment on how they are doing on the four actions Richard summarises?
