Please stop asking for the business case for blogs or Twitter or Facebook or all these digital tools. Is there a business case for people reading the Irish Times in the office? Or listening to Morning Ireland?
On Friday night I was in London. On Friday night a local furniture store in Cork burned down. My Cork friends in London and myself watched what happened via my mobile and Twitter. Feck the notion of “how can we use this for business” before we allow it through our web filters. Just allow it. These are some of the pics we saw from London.
Pictures via Sam Kidd who was on the scene.
This is the aftermath:
What exactly is your justification for blocking the outside world from hearing from your company and sharing with your company?
In a word “Control”
If you want to control everything said about your company then it makes sense to limit the number of channels in which your company is written about.
Unfortunately, that is only a valid argument if “user generated content” didn’t exist. Many companies will be approached only after someone used their favorite search engine to find out about them.
If the search engine says you don’t exist (no one, including you is talking about you) then the opinion if neutral to negative.
Depending on what is used, social media can have a multiplier effect on the search result. So if your customers are writing about you, the search reveals what the uncontrolled customers are saying.
If Morning Ireland or the Irish Times was going to do a piece on you, you would try to ensure that your opinion is captured in the article. The same applies to any social media tool.
So the business case for using any social media tool, is control. You can’t control what people say about you online, but you can minimize the damage (if any) and accept the praise (if any).