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The Nine Worst Social Media Blunders by PCB Manufacturers in 2012
February 11, 2013 |Estimated reading time: 4 minutes
Welcome back for part two. To those of you who missed last week’s column, here’s the background...In January, I put together the following report: The North American PCB Industry and Social Media Adoption, January 2013. I reviewed every PCB manufacturer in North America I could find with $6 million in sales or higher--95 companies in all. For each company, I was looking for the answers to these questions:
- Which social media are they using?
- What is their posting frequency?
- How are they using each social network?
The focus was on the “big five:” Each company’s website (because a website can and should be very social), LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. If you would like to see where things stand as of January 2103, including the PCB companies that are doing good things with social media, send an e-mail to brucej@practicalsmm.com and I'll send you a copy. In the meantime, I have compiled some "low-lites," examples of things some PCB manufacturers are doing that are, just...well, you'll see. This is part two of my awards for worst practices in social media in 2012: These are the worst nine. At #9: The "What do all These People Want From Us?” Award To the PCB manufacturer that has 400 followers, the one that has 700 followers, and the one that has 1,300 followers that give those followers nothing to follow. When a company has a LinkedIn company page, visitors can click on a button on the page and follow that company. This means the visitor will receive any news updates the PCB company publishes. It’s smart to have a company page on LinkedIn. And it’s great to have hundreds of people following you that want to hear about any news or updates about your company. But for this to work you actually have to publish news and updates. They didn’t all sign up because they are telepathic. At #8: The “Yes, But it’s a Really Nice Press Release” Award To the PCB manufacturer that makes a visitor to their website fill out a form, including phone number, to request press releases. Makes me wonder if the company then calls those people and asks, “So, what did you think?” At #7: The “Behold the Wonder That is Me” Award To the several companies that just can’t get enough about how great they are on their Facebook pages and Twitter accounts. If a company provides information that a reader can use and that helps him understand or deal with a problem, he will come back for more. No one thinks, “Hey, a hard sell! I want to subscribe to this!” At #6: The Existential “When is a Facebook Page not a Facebook Page?” Award To the PCB company that has a link on their website to their Facebook page. Of course, they have no Facebook page. Maybe it’s a Zen thing. At #5: The “That’s Not a Dead Language After All” Award To the PCB company in the Midwest whose website has an entire section in Latin. Many do-it-yourself website shells come with each section (“About Us,” “Our Products and Services” etc.) filled with “Lorem Ipsum,” Latin words that fill out the prospective sections and show how they would look. You’re not supposed to leave the Latin words there. At #4: Introducing “The Anti-social Network” Award To the PC manufacturer whose Twitter stream is private and can’t be seen. Which brings up a question: What is the point of having a Twitter button on your website that takes you to a Twitter account that’s closed off? A visitor can’t see whether there’s any value to the Twitter feed. As Yoda would say, “User nasty does not customers bring.” At #3: The “It’s the Thought That Counts” AwardTo the Midwestern PCB company that has “News,” “New Employee,” and “Upcoming Trade Show” sections on their website--all unencumbered by any news, new employees, or upcoming trade shows. At #2: The “We’d Tell You, But Then We’d Have to Kill You” Award To the company in the Great Lakes region whose website can’t be found with Google or Bing. The company designed or redesigned their website and never un-hid it from the search engines. Unless you type the website name exactly in the browser window, you’ll never reach it. This could also have been called the, “Wow, No One Likes the New Website Design" award. And finally... At #1: The “We’re Not Satisfied Until You’re Not Satisfied” Award To the PCB manufacturer that stopped posting to their Facebook page over a year ago. If you go to their Facebook page here is what you see: A post by a customer telling their story about how the manufacturer did a horrible job on their boards and left the customer hung out to dry. That post was put there three months ago, and was still there on February 1. All humor aside, the moral to the story is that if you make a half-hearted attempt with your social media, your results may actually make you worse off than if you had done nothing at all. You have invested your time and money and the result is you come across as a company that doesn’t pay attention to detail, or just doesn't care. Like all tools, if you don’t wield social media correctly, someone can get hurt. And that someone will be you.Bruce Johnston is a sales consultant specializing in social media. He has over 25 years' experience in high-tech sales and management, most recently as general manager of a PCB manufacturer. He can be reached through his website www.practicalsmm.com or through his profile on LinkedIn.