Social Networking

Marketing and branding initiatives in today’s environment require knowledge and mastery of new social media technologies that are changing the way we do business – period. Over the years of working in the these industries, I’ve seen a number of companies embrace the new technologies while I’ve seen others resist them. Those that embraced them are leaps and bounds ahead of the curve and it will only benefit them as we continue moving forward with an unstoppable trend toward transparency and personal engagement.

Old school methods of advertising and generating press certainly still have their place, but the traditional techniques of the past are quickly becoming irrelevant. Publishing advertisements and issuing strategic press releases to create lasting impressions and perceptions simply don’t work like they used to. Consumers today want real-time information, real-deal personalities and real value for their attention and hard-earned money.

At Gray Spectrum, we focus primarily on three social networking tools – Twitter, Facebook and blogs. The combination of these three tools offer almost any company the opportunity to communicate with their target markets in distinct ways, each having their own unique benefits, as I’ll explain below.

Twitter is first up on the list because it’s the tool that delivers your news first. Twitter is about speed and brevity. With messages (known as ‘tweets’) limited to just 140 characters, users of Twitter must be creative in how they communicate their ideas, news or any information they’re attempting to propagate. Once a Twitter account is setup, other Twitter users can find your Twitter username and ‘follow’ you, meaning they’re linked to your account and receive any future tweets that you publish. The tweets are sent immediately to all followers, whether they’re in your office or halfway around the world. Twitter harnesses profound new technologies that allow instant proliferation of news, knowledge, ideas and opinions. Although primarily embraced by the youngest generations, Twitter is rapidly gaining ground as more mature audiences are hopping on board.

Facebook (which obviously needs little introduction) is the perfect tool to publish information that just can’t be honed down to 140 characters or less. Facebook allows for the posting of various media formats, including text, photos, videos, music files and more. Although most people today have a Facebook account setup, there is another type of account called a Facebook Fan Page, designated solely for businesses or other institutions (e.g. government entities, not-for-profits, etc.). Anyone with a Facebook account can visit your company’s Fan Page and become a ‘fan’, thereby becoming notified anytime you publish new content to your fan page. Fan pages are great for sharing news, information about your company and upcoming events, or just about anything else you feel might be of value to your fans.

Lastly, there are blogs. ‘Blog’ is actually a condensed term for the phrase ‘web log’. A web log is any type of article, editorial or other discourse on any given subject. Blogs are most often published on a content management system (CMS), such as WordPress or Blogger. The articles are categorized by date and/or subject and can be ‘tagged’, or assigned a specific term related to the subject matter of the specific article, and can later be searched for based on the tag(s) assigned to it. Blogs are great for more in-depth discussions and reviews on topics (such as this one) that just aren’t as suitable for Facebook.

In a nutshell, use Twitter for short, immediate posts of your ideas or news headlines; use Facebook for slightly more in-depth content and media; and use a blog for lengthier discussions surrounding any given subject. Contact us to find out more about these technologies and see how Gray Spectrum can put them to use for your company.

-Benjamin Gray

Principal, Gray Spectrum