A few years ago, I joined Facebook. I created personal and company pages to connect with family and friends AND to promote my business. But I couldn't make the two pages do what I wanted; there were so many worthless items appearing that other people had written.
For example, one night, a contact in Dallas made four posts just before 11pm about the fact that he was tired and was wondering whether he should go to bed. These four posts showed up on my business page, accompanied by 15+ comments from HIS friends urging him to go to bed if he was that tired.
And I couldn't figure out how to delete individual items, so I ended up deleting people as fast as I was adding them. I finally decided that Facebook had insufficient value for me to put up with the frustration it caused me, so I deleted both pages.
I never did anything with Twitter. I didn't think I had much to say that would interest many other people, and I didn't think I had the time to follow a bunch of other people and/or companies. I didn't see that any value could be packed into 140 characters.
On the other hand, I have been an active LinkedIn user for many years. I keep my profile updated and spend time every week looking at questions and answering those where I have more to say than just "me too!" I congratulate people on promotions, keep up with folks who change jobs, and offer help where I can. And I look at new people who have joined to find those I already know, or with whom I have many connections, to expand my own list of connections.
Opportunities have come my way through LinkedIn, and I have reconnected there with people when emails to them bounced back because they had changed jobs. I have made some solid business connections and friends with whom I regularly interact online and on the phone.
I often ask other marketing professionals about their A/E or related firms' use of Facebook and Twitter. They all said they couldn't tie specific new sales or clients to either outlet. They said they were using those tools "because everyone else is," and we would laugh.
I thought that using a service because everyone else is, even though one couldn't identify real benefits from using the service, was a bit like 25+ years ago, when we all still used Yellow Pages advertising. It told our competitors that we were still in business but didn't often result in new clients or business.
I've changed my mind -- and my mindset!
After all, marketing is about tomorrow -- who we will work with/for tomorrow, what we will work on tomorrow, what we will bill time to tomorrow. Therefore, marketing leaders have to be concerned with what technology we will use tomorrow. We need to get, and stay, ahead of the curve on relevant technologies.
So I'm embarking on a course of self-education about all the technologies I've pooh-pooh'ed and ignored. I owe it to myself, my clients, and anyone in my industry who thinks I have anything of value to say. By the time I'm done, I expect to be using Facebook, Twitter and other tools I discover along my journey.
That's my resolution for 2012 - a few weeks late perhaps, but it doesn't matter when I catch up as long as I DO catch up!