I had a pretty interesting conversation a few months ago with a business that had hired me to speak to them about using social media to promote their business to the younger generation.\u00a0 You see, their customer base in general is getting older and they fear they aren’t doing all they can do to build customers for the future.\u00a0 On this point, they are quite right to be worried, and it was quite an interesting time over the span of several meetings as I talked about the various things they could possibly do and what it was going to require of them if they wanted to actually do what I was suggesting that they do.<\/p>\n
I guess the most interesting part of the discussion was when we talked about why they were blocking all social media websites on their network.\u00a0 Basically, in a nutshell, they didn’t want their employees ‘wasting time’ on Facebook and Twitter and Youtube.\u00a0 I mean, they had hired me to give them a game plan on how to use social media to promote their business, and they were a little taken aback when I said they were dumb for blocking those websites from their employees.\u00a0 Well, I didn’t actually say the words “you are dumb”, after all they were paying me, but in so many words that is what I told them.<\/p>\n
Of course, this is a common thing among businesses today.\u00a0 You don’t know how to handle it, so you do the only thing that you know to do… block it.\u00a0 Rather than take the time to evaluate exactly how it might effect what your employees are doing, you jump to conclusions and assume that it must be bad.\u00a0 What they don’t know is that their employees are probably wasting more time than they know because they are using their smartphones to access social media, since they can’t do it on their computers.\u00a0 Smartphone growth is bordering on crazy<\/a>, and it shows no signs of letting up, and I guarantee you that those smartphones are burning up with status updates and tweets.<\/p>\n As I sit here, that business that paid me good money to listen to my plan hasn’t done anything with social media that I can see, and I can’t say I am surprised.\u00a0 You see, if you block social media activity from your employees, how can you try to use social media to promote your business with a straight face?\u00a0 Well, you can’t.<\/p>\n Could your employees waste time on Facebook and Twitter?\u00a0 Of course, I mean, it’s pretty easy to do isn’t it?\u00a0 But instead of blocking it and forcing everyone to go ‘underground’, you need to embrace it and manage it.\u00a0 Social media has benefits not only for your business to interact with customers, but it can also (dare I say it) benefit your employees.\u00a0 In my next post I’ll explain how.<\/p>\n