It’s my own fault. I threw down the gauntlet to our Fuzion team to put our keyboards where our mouths are and get blogging! And I volunteered to be the first one on our new rota that Ann-Marie is going to manage!
We have seen it work so well for our business, attracting attention to Fuzion and what we believe in and the activity definitely makes us stand out from the crowd. Seth Godin and his Cow would be glowing with purple pride I like to think!!
Everyone knows we talk about social media a lot at Fuzion and that we truly believe in the value of these new tools to promote our businesses – as well as that we can back it up with solid numbers on our various social media pages; we have regular and varied activity and we have one of the most prolific social media bloggers in the country working with us @gregcantyfuzion.
Unlike some of our competitors, the fact that we can back it up has won us solid business, it has helped us thrive and attract great clients and great people working with us.
Most of us in the team though, bar Greg (and poor @JLM_cork – who has about a million tweets and not really a corresponding number of followers – sorry JLM we’ll have to remedy that!!) don’t do enough with the tools that are right at our finger tips. I think it’s a case of the mechanics car – last one to get fixed.
The Mechanics Car!
Hands up I am the worst offender. I have 1,391 followers on twitter and for the life of me I honestly don’t know why they follow me, as I don’t connect with them as often as I should. I honestly believe that most follow me because Greg mentions me on tweets so much that his followers think that I must have something interesting to say! (I don’t but I’m working on it!!!)
Don’t get me started on LinkedIn – I have a million invites waiting to accept – so many I think Greg would divorce me if he realised just how neglectful I was of the platform!!! And in my shame I think this is about my 4th blog (although my 3rd was on the global Lean-In blog that was reprinted in regional and national papers and I got a radio interview out of it!!)
I’m trying to engage more with the various platforms as I know it wins us business, new contacts and even some good friends – and I want more of all of these!!!
I want to engage more, I need to write more blogs, manage our on-line reputation and not leave it up to @gregcantyfuzion and @JLM_cork to fly the Fuzion flag.
I think one of the things that puts me off a little is that I’m not as brave as @gregcantyfuzion and I think sometimes with social media you need to be. He really puts it out there. He is honest, open and shows very much what we as a business stand for – and in his own personal blog what he stands for (and sometimes won’t stand for!!). I am being honest myself when I say that I couldn’t be that honest!!!
Use Your Voice
The odd time Greg’s blogs and tweets get a negative reaction from some people. But if he is going to be that prolific – sometimes he is going to have people disagreeing with him. Greg welcomes that – he never writes something that he hasn’t researched and is prepared to back up his opinions and enjoys creating debate around something that he has a strong opinion about.
He also gets himself in to trouble the odd time, but he is happy to fight the fight, as he never writes something just for the sake of it and relishes the debate/battle.
Of course I am proud of him, but some of the blogs I wouldn’t publish – but you know what.. unless I flag the Fuzion flag more on-line, Greg’s is the only Fuzion voice that will be heard. So I shouldn’t really complain!!
tweet @gregcantyfuzion if this reminds you of anyone!!!
Person to Person
We keep on saying to our clients – “Your clients don’t want to deal with brands they want to deal with people”. Social media gives us a really unique opportunity to engage with our clients person to person. So we should all be using it more! And that’s not just for business owners – the whole team should take ownership and use every opportunity they can to use their voice to promote the business that they work for – everyone can be a winner.
Now I just need to knuckle down and get my voice heard out there more and I hope that this encourages more people out there who are lurking, reading the blogs, to get their fingers to keyboards and get blogging, tweeting and for god sake start accepting all those LinkedIn connections.
You can start by commenting on this blog if you like it – or comment even if you don’t – I swear all comments are welcome – and that’s the truth – honestly 😉 xx
Deirdre Waldron is a partner of Fuzion
