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Thursday, September 6, 2012

Social media is like that bluelight thing

I had a thought about social media, and it pretty much works, if you're into metaphors and those kind of things.

Let's say your business - whatever it is, a service, a consultancy, a cute little store selling handmade soaps - is a great big "box" store. Picture one, it doesn't matter what the giant name is on the front of the store.

You, as a big box owner, use a variety of tools to communicate with your customers. These are your constituents. If you are a shopper, you've seen all of these.

That's when I had a funny flash of inspiration and drew a correlation between each one of these, and which social media channels we use for a similar type of communication.
  • The "Meet Your Store Manager" sign = Linkedin
  • The sales flyer by the door = E-newsletter
  • Blue light special & loudspeaker blasts = Twitter
  • Sales assistants and customer service desk = Facebook
  • Aisle endcap = Pinterest
  • In-store Smart Network  = YouTube

Thinking like this can help you decide where to invest your social media efforts. What does your "store" need? What makes sense for you?

Don't have blue light specials? Don't need to blast specials or hot tips over the loud speaker? Then you can probably do without Twitter. If you don't have a constituency waiting for your quick blurts of day-changing data, don't waste your time. Think about what your business needs.

Don't have any information that your customers want to pick up and read? Then you probably don't want to barge into their inbox.

Don't have big displays with great product and flashy images? Your Pinterest will be very shallow.

Unless, of course, you love it and you're having fun.

That's where I'm going with this. What do you think?

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