Yesterday I gave a seminar about social media marketing and the question of personal profile or company profile raised it’s head. Should I go online as me, or as my company?
Larger companies and consumer products/services probably need to lead from the brand, but in the world of small business B2B, people buy people, so I tend to advocate the use of personal profiles for the individuals.
But, here comes a dichotomy for me. With my personal brand online, such as this Blog and my Twitter profile, my personal traits have a tendency to rear their heads… I can sometimes be blunt, impatient and defensive. Questions is, if I suppress these, am I not being genuine?
My problem (and this may be a good thing) is that I don’t. If someone asks a question, I may choose to offer an opinion in my field of expertise, even if it’s not what they want to hear. If I am battling for a cause, I will stand my ground and debate.
When everyone has a voice online, you are bound to get clashes due to styles of engagement. For instance, I hate people selling on Twitter. And, sometimes, even if they think they are doing nothing wrong, the sales person shines through, it’s in their nature: Like the serial networkers of BNI and Ecadamy, et al. It may work for them, but it certainly does not float my boat and the guard goes up.
Although they are closely linked, marketing is not sales, and I think this point sometimes loses it’s way online. In a social environment, do people want to be sold to?
I once overheard an ‘old school’ gentleman say something at a gathering and although the context is different, it sticks with me. “They are not our kind of people” he told someone about another family (it wasn’t a bigoted remark BTW).
With the number of people on the social media channels, you will obviously get people you like and people you don’t like and perhaps the less vanilla you are the more likelihood you will engage with the people who really ‘get’ you.
Of course, a great part of the whole social media machine is control… you just switch off the ones you don’t connect with. And, if the boot is on the other foot and I am not your bag, I’m sure you will be switching me off too.
Nice post,
I agree with you on this one as I find myself completely disregarding those on twitter who are constantly trying to sell me stuff.
I tend to scan through tweets until I see either a face (tweets from a human) or a company I’m interested in.
I work for a very large organisation and there is no way in the world I would ever say on twitter that I worked for them as it would be picked almost immediately by the buzz monitoring tools they use. We have been warned on a number of occasions that if we talk about the company or colleagues online, we will be dealt with appropriately.
In this day of age I think this is absolutely ridiculous, but from a brand protection point of view I can see some sense behind this decision…