TamTamy Blog

In a recent post in Mashable, Sarah Evans (author of PR and social media blog) synthesizes a sort of guide on what companies must and must not do when they decide to take part in social media. As the company’s worker in charge will necessarily be one (or more) person, it is useless to try and be impersonal at all costs, particularly when you are entering an environment aimed at socializing.

Commenting what has been suggested and basing on this principle, in this and in the next post we will see what rules can be useful to companies when they want to create their own identity on the net.
Let us start with some guidelines:

• Always be sincere and authentic

Feigning a part in which everything is always alright, besides being tiresome, is not a good way to get into contact with people. Appearing more human, showing that you can have bad days and that you are not perfect is in fact a way to connect to other people and, consequently, to create a link between them and your business.

• Carefully choose your avatar

According to what you want to convey, it will be important to choose an avatar which represents the company (as the logo, for instance) or the people who work in it (as the smiling, friendly face of the president).

• Post constructive messages in order to strengthen your image

Let us remember that everything which is written on social media, even if it disappears from their homepage, stays on the net for quite a long time. It is important to always keep in mind that what you write could be re-read in a totally different context and months later, influencing the idea that customers have of your brand. It is thus fundamental to share elements, write messages, make comments that are always consistent with the company itself. It is the connection of all these elements (but also the single extrapolation of one or more of them) which influences people and create an image of your brand. Make it solid and unmistakable.

(Continued in the next post)

We have verified that blocking the access to social networks and 2.0 consumer services is not an appropriate solution, because it creates discontent among employees, who will look for alternative solutions and use them without permission. So, you can consider introducing enterprise 2.0 solutions to renew and improve your company, but also to focus your workforce’s attention using their same tools.

We have seen how companies were in a way forced to modify their technological structure introducing social media of different kinds, as the generational change of the workers involved required it, more or less explicitly.

As a company decides to adopt the very tools that its employees have been using only for their personal interest, it makes a profitable use of a new form of collaboration in which people will take part more willingly and with less effort.

The language becomes more familiar and workers, besides being more encouraged and reactive in concentrating with tools they are familiar with, will hardly look for further recreation with other social networks.

Of course, the form of entertainment that communities such as Facebook or MySpace offer is very different from the one offered by companies, aimed at social collaboration in the work environment and not allowing any waste of time. As a consequence, it is unthinkable that there can be a total replacement. But no doubt, a decrease in the use of the mentioned consumer communities can increase the productivity of the individual workers without creating too much stress.

We have already seen how RSS feeds can be very effective if you want to find news about your company, understand who is talking about it and, above all, keep informed on the evolution of the market.

This presentation highlights how the combined use of RSS feeds and social media can be a perfect mix. Monitoring the conversations on a specific subject and being “social” are easily performed activities that, with the least effort, can help companies widen their horizons and make themselves known among customers and partners.

Paul Bradshaw, journalist and blogger for Online Journalism Blog, lays stress on the new types of information and journalist, which are no more connected only to press and websites, but are rather extended over different media and different characteristics of these media, which should not be overlooked if we want to have a more complete view of what is happening around us, in real time.

Twitter is a microblogging service you can use to express your status and send it to one or more contacts through the site itself, a text message, emails, etc.

Since it was invented and launched in 2006 by Obvious Corp. of San Francisco, different applications have been created, based on Twitter’s APIs, which enrich its features making use of, for example, Google’s maps or creating widget desktops.

Twitter is a social media that easily meets consumers’ needs, but this doesn’t mean that it is not suitable also for companies.

It can be useful to create buzz around some news, for instance, and let the word of mouth spread once that one or more persons have re-twitted the post (that is, they have published it again).
Many companies are already using Twitter to promote the contents of their blogs or to simply make their news known. In this case, even more than in those we have already mentioned, holding the role of the expert, and thus also of the influencer, will be fundamental if you want the people of your community to find your tweets interesting and, as a consequence, decide to follow your updates.

Even if apparently it does not look like that, Twitter is a really valid tool to reach potential customers. In fact, a debate is in progress in these days, following the recent statement of its founders, who are thinking about adding a pay service for those who make a commercial use of it. In this case, everybody (and every company) will probably decide whether to keep using the social network in its free version or to pay a subscription in exchange for some additional features, as mentioned in Twitter’s official blog.

How has the scenario changed in the last years? And how will it be in twenty years?
This video highlights some essential information which shows how technology is accelerating the evolution of our culture inside and outside the Internet.
In 1984, for example, the devices connected on the Net were 1000, in 1992 they became 1 million, in 2008 they have reached 1 billion.
Did you know that it took radio 38 years to reach an audience of 50 million users, 13 years to TV, 4 to the Internet, 3 to the iPod and only 2 to Facebook?
Did you know that, at the moment, 31 billion searches are carried out every month on Google, while in 2006 they were only 2,7 billion? It is unbelievable that they have more than decupled in only 2 years.
But future is yet to be discovered.