The previous blog entry here stimulated a number of private emails to me. It felt like a lot of people were nodding in agreement. Clearly, it struck a nerve. An editor friend shared with me a parallel experience she's having at work.
Her company publishes a series of specialized ink-on-paper trade magazines for niche subscriber bases – old-time media, in other words. The powers-that-be in her company are trying to stay ahead of the curve, as well they should. For some time now, they have been alert to the impact of the Internet on their products and audiences.
To that end, they were early in launching web versions of their half-dozen magazines, available to subscribers for no additional cost, where readers can find supplemental and updated information about topics covered in the magazines. That’s a smart model and one that a number of other print publications have been following – to their benefit.
But now, her managers are latching onto the buzz of social media as the next new thing. Her boss said that if they don’t get into social media, they’ll be left behind.
Perhaps. But, as she wisely noted, the meeting at which this idea was launched was devoid of any discussion of readers’ media preferences or habits. There was also no dialogue about the appropriateness of tools like Twitter and blogs to carry their messages and information to their target audiences, or what specific type of information would be offered in these new media.
Instead, the discussion centered largely on how social media works, who should do what, and when the effort will be launched. In the end, as my friend sighed, it will mean more work for the editors and writers.
This kind of discussion should really be about the interaction between a content provider and its audience. On the one hand, the audience’s preferences must guide the choice of media. But on the other hand, the disseminator of information has the opportunity – some might say the responsibility – to move its audience along the curve of technological innovation. It’s a delicate balancing act between what the audience will accept versus the content provider’s desire to advance its business model.
Innovation is like that. After all, where would we be today if Steve Jobs had dismissed the idea of the iPod 10 years ago because people didn’t listen to music and manage their music collections that way? What if Steve Jobs saw the music business through the narrow lens of the Tower Records model? (Remember Tower Records?) After all, it could have turned into a major flop. Fortunately for Jobs and Apple, it didn’t. His target customers “got it.” And they got on board pretty quickly.
To cite a metaphor, suppose I had approached last weekend with the good intention of doing some long-postponed household chores. What if the first thing I did was to open my toolbox and grab three random tools: a hammer, a screwdriver, and a socket wrench. Then I went to do my household tasks. What’s wrong with that picture? Obviously, I selected tools before assessing the nature of the chore. So I had a wrench, a screwdriver and a hammer in search of the appropriate job where they might be useful.
Sounds silly. No one would operate that way. But isn’t that, in fact, what a lot of people do when they seek to communicate to a discrete audience by pre-selecting a given medium without thinking through the needs and desires of the audience? It’s exactly what my friend’s company is doing.
Without so much as a simple poll of readers, this organization is going to force its editors and writers to start tweeting and blogging. Why? “Because everyone else is doing it and if we don’t start now, we’ll be left behind.”
I’ve seen similar thinking inside other business organizations, where communications professionals (who should know better) think that it would be nifty if their CEO started tweeting to employees, or began writing an internal blog. Perhaps it was the boss’ idea to start with and the communications pro felt powerless to resist. Consider Dilbert’s “pointy-haired” boss, who torments Tina, the tech writer:
Certainly there are cases where a CEO has plenty to say to his/her employee audience, where blogging or tweeting makes perfect sense because they are the quickest, easiest and cheapest ways to have on-going dialogues with that internal audience. But beware of the initial excitement that often peters out after a few weeks, as the CEO loses interest and/or enthusiasm.
As noted in my previous blog, I’ve seen these kinds of ventures start out great guns, only to fade away because the CEO runs out of things to write about, or finds he/she doesn’t have the time. At that point, as often happens, someone in the communications department starts writing it for the CEO, thereby defeating the whole purpose of the exercise.
No matter the technology, no matter how sexy and exciting it may feel to be tweeting or blogging in 2010, if your audience is not in a position or desirous of following your tweets and blogs, you’re wasting your time and money, while risking losing the trust and interest of your audience.
Instead, do your homework. Find out more about your target audience: who they are; how they like to get the kind of information you’re providing; whether they are comfortable with social media; why they come to you in the first place for that information; and the specific type of information they want and expect to find on blogs or tweets, to what level of detail. Until you probe for the answers to those kinds of questions, save your time and money and put the blog and Twitter on the back burner.
No comments:
Post a Comment