I was somewhat saddened and amused at the ignorance of a man I spoke to at a large Swiss company a year or so back. I asked him ( in his new role as head of the advertising department ), what plans he had to implement social media.
His reply? "I have no plans whatsoever to use socia media channels. They don't bring anything to the table".
Out of curiosity I Googled this gentleman (don't we all?) and found that he actually has a Twitter account, into which he has posted precisely (at the time of this post) FOUR tweets since joining in 2009. One of the Tweets concerned one of the firm's new products.
It's quite inconceivable to me to see how he is going spread the word for his company if he refuses to join the revolution. I see that none of his sixteen followers re-tweeted the product launch news from him. He seems to think that the company's website and paper based print media is the way forward.
At a recent trade fair where he was hosting a stand, I noticed that nearly every other company had a dedicated Facebook page and Twitter account. I was able to follow their activities and get details on the newest product releases etc but from his company there was nothing.
I do notice to his credit however, that he had had videos commissioned to show off the company's products but without the social media aspect to spark interest, there have been very few views.
In October 2011, I began to get interested in social media and online marketing. Statistics fascinate me and with these facts in mind, I started an anonymous blog to test out my theories. I decided from the start to make it anonymous so that the visitor count wouldn't be influenced by any of my acquaintances visiting it. I launched it without any fanfare whatsoever and studied the statistics. Using only keywords, hashtags and a few other search engine optimisation techniques I see that it has now had 61,000 hits!
Statistics as of November 2013
On my own personal website, I again played with the S.E.O. management and elevated it to number two on the Google Switzerland search results when people type in "fotografie aller art" (all types of photography) into the search field. All this without paying for Adwords or anything.
Well as the title of this post suggests, diversification is the key to surviving nowadays. Apart from photography, I am now offering website optimisation and building to several clients. I'll be helping them get a foothold in the world of social media. Also in the pipeline will be photography workshops in the new year. I'll be writing more about that in my next post.
So to reiterate. Content is king and the best way to get that content out there is to jump onboard the social media bandwagon. You'd better hurry though because it isn't slowing down!
Thanks for reading.
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