Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Hey, we're social! (not)

It seems a bit desperate when an IT company feels the need to issue a press release announcing that it now has a Facebook page and a Twitter account to augment its blog. I came across a release from US-based plant design software vendor COADE in my RSS feed from AECcafe.com, and my first reaction was “so what!?“

I mean, thousands of companies have already taken these steps, often months ago – doesn’t this just make the company look like its lagging behind (not a good thing for an IT business)? And with the Facebook page still relatively young (28 fans) and @coadeinc being followed by just 12 people and only tweeting eight times, there isn’t exactly a COADE social media frenzy, is there? And the “COADE Insider blog”, launched in August 2007, is mainly a regurgitation of news releases and event announcements, with little personality, no theme, no thought leadership. Unsurprisingly, only a handful of posts have generated any comments.

Perhaps COADE should have built up a healthy online following and really begun to engage in the conversation before drawing attention to the fact it had created these additional channels of communication? But if these channels were successful, of course, no announcement would be necessary as COADE’s fans and followers would be using ‘word of mouse’ to spread the news themselves.

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