A lot of organizations, particularly software companies, have people who are engaged in marketing their products through social networking. And since I've written product comparisons or reviews occasionally, I've had corporate representatives comment on my blog, follow me on twitter, or even send me an email directly. (I've also had what I would call social network spam, where people just comment/tweet/email "try this $newthing" in what is clearly an auto-response to a keyword search, but I'm not including that here.)
I think corporate social networking representatives have to walk a pretty fine line. They need to be informal enough to be personally relatable, professional enough to properly represent their organization, and responsive to a very large user base. It's a difficult job, but the really good ones go the extra mile and use social networking to:
- Make themselves (in a limited way) personally accessible
- Discover the needs, wants and problems faced by their customers
- Channel those needs into product features, bug fixes, and how-to articles
When done well, it's not only made me consider a new product but it's also made me go back and reconsider a product I had initially decided against.
Nice work, Erin.
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