A recent Marketing post, provides a decent overview of the recent incident at a Conservative rally where a couple of girls were ejected, mainly as a result of Facebook.
This incident has prompted me to share a couple of recent experineces.
I am in a new industry for me – Environmental Biotechnology. I have attended a number of conferences and trade shows, made dozens of presentations and have been curious, as a committed and long time SM cultist, to see what impact SM has in this particular industry.
Answer … none.
In industries that do not revolve around digital media folks sometimes misunderstand it or worse shun SM.
At the conferences, in talking to folks, I get a wide range of responses when I ask – "Do you follow us (@webicanada) on Twitter?" The responses range from "Eyeroll" to "Huge eyeroll!"
I have found two companies or, rather, individuals in the last year that take advantage of SM.
I believe the main lesson here is, we SM denizens are a world apart (Different planet!) from folks in certain industries. In fact, the idea of social media is most times scoffed at by a lot of people I have met. That is fine with me. Their loss.
Even though there is minimal, or even negligeable uptake in our industry I have used this wonderful tool, to pick up two clients. It is very powerful. Also it is really nice to be way ahead of the curve and we are already positioned as leaders in this field, so why not lead in Social Media activities?
At one conference I Tweeted …"Anybody here????" One person responded out of 1200 attendees. That has turned into a great relationship. We are re-tweeting each other, passing along the word and have gathered a lot of support for our individual companies.
Social Media, in the hands of the unwashed, the uninformed and the uninitiated, can turn out badly as witnessed by the Conservative gaff. My suggestion is this … if you, as a SM professional, enter into an industry where SM is not adopted, raise the beacon, carry the banner high and show em what to do!