This is week #3 of our #shehechat single post format published on Thursday each week. We are keeping the posts shorter for a couple of reasons. Many folks don’t get time to review the post until right before our 8 p.m. CST chat, so we wanted a format that can be skimmed or read quickly. Also, we want more of our conversation during #shehechat to be spontaneous and not just a rehashing of a blot post you can read anytime.
This week we state (sarcastically) that: Social media doesn’t work
Jim Says:
There are a lot of people I associate with who are of the opinion that Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Linkedin and all the other places you can find me in the social media universe are a waste of time. I’m here to tell you they are all wrong and I hope they go on believing just that so I have less competition in the social space. At a trade show earlier this week during a meeting with an important trading partner, I heard the following, “Oh Jim, I’ve already got the PDF of that. You put it on your blog and then tweeted about it. You guys do social media very well.” There are at least a half dozen other examples of how social media helped us this week at GraphExpo, but that’s the one that mattered most to me. Social media works. You can either trust me on this one or start playing catch up in a year or two instead of right now.
Shelby Says:
Like Jim, I’ve heard the same proclamations from colleagues and friends that social media doesn’t work, that it’s a waste of time and that it has no return on investment. I can think of several connections and benefits social media gave us during our time at GraphExpo. We spent a lot of time in the Printerverse, a social media focused meeting space put on by Print Media Centr, and were invited to a wonderful dinner with our friends from InterLink One and Grow Socially. However, my greatest social media success resulted from a status I posted on Facebook before the trade show even began. I simply stated that I was going to be at GraphExpo and asked if any of my connections were attending. One comment I received was from a company colleague requesting a meeting while we were at the show. That meeting may or may not end up with a financial benefit, but it wouldn’t have happened at all without social media.
This Week’s Topics
- How do you use social media at events to promote your services or products?
- Do more of your professional connections begin in the social space or in real life? Which is better?
- How has the way you conduct business changed as you engage in social media more?
- What’s the best long-term benefit you’ve seen through social media?
- What’s your best social media success story?
Tune in to #shehechat tonight at 8 p.m. CST on Twitter to discuss this further. Also, if you have a topic you’d like us to cover, please fill out our contact form or comment below!
