It’s pretty rad.
I remember many years ago (possibly the 2008 Oscars?) explaining to my boss at the time what a URL shortener was and how we could use one in our Twitter coverage of the ceremony.
Today, my current bosses are on Twitter and, I believe, actually have more followers than I do.
But for all the awesomeness that is spending part of the workday on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and G+, it also has downsides.
Social media is an insatiable beast
Unlike my personal accounts, I can’t simply take a break if I’m overwhelmed with other tasks or just don’t feel like being social. You still need to be putting content out there and responding to feedback.
All about the numbers
Social media is hard to quantify. So follower and likes numbers are easy to latch on to as something concrete, and the higherups tend to look at those numbers as a measure of success. It’s certainly something that should be factored in, and we shouldn’t be living or dying by that alone, but the more old-school types may take some convincing.
Negative feedback
Being social opens you up to, well, everyone. And they can say anything they want. Learning to deal with criticism in such an open forum is something all brands have to struggle with at some point.
No feedback at all
Posting something that garners no reaction or interaction at all sucks. Doing that multiple times in a row is an even bigger bummer. But this is reality for many of us at some point; we’re not all huge media organisations or consumer brands that can push out anything and instantly see clicks, comments and shares (been there; it’s quite gratifying).
“old-school types may take some convincing” — why is that? I feel like old school people thrive by numbers. Especially test scores. SAT and GPA determines where you go to school, etc. I feel like old school people have a hard time understanding new fangled thinking about quality and mushy feelings and stuff over hard numbers!
“It’s certainly something that should be factored in, and we shouldn’t be living or dying by that alone, but the more old-school types may take some convincing”
Sorry, maybe I wasn’t clear! My point was that old school types tend to rely on raw numbers, but numbers are not all that count – and THAT is what may take some work to convince them of.
That’s real cool that social media is a part of your job. I’m still just a newb with twitter, but I’m learning! I’m always afraid I’m breaking some kind of unwritten rule I don’t know about when I’m using it, though.
“Social Media”: trademarked brand name for a type of gigantic time vacuum.