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The recession: your pivot into successful social media

Posted by Michael Leis on November 13, 2008 at 04:08 PM PDT

A client (who will remain nameless) has recently been lamenting the economic distress leading to people in local offices without clientele. Is there a more perfect scenario to begin establishing a social media presence with resident experts that have extra time on their hands? Let's look at a few of the more commonplace objections that got thrown my way when proposing that now's the time to begin installing a blogging program:

Our people just don't have the time

I just kinda cocked my head like a dog that just heard the door open at this one. A year ago, when everyone was busy, that made sense. Now, with people playing textwirl waiting for the phone to ring, it has become code for "We're afraid of what we don't know."

The answer is: don't worry. There are plenty of people blogging and willing to help you develop a strategy and tactical plan that works for your employees and your organization. It's not an all-or-none situation. Your staff can write first drafts, and then someone professional can spend less time polishing it up. Dollar cost averaging: your know-how, without a ton of billable hours from the agency.

We're not exactly filled with experts

There is a pervasive, irrational feeling that people need to be the utmost authority to blog. Really, the most important thing is just having a different perspective. To your audience of prospects and current clients, that means learning something new. To your SEO effort, it means creating content likely more in-line with searchers than your paid-for keyword stuffing.

Who's going to read it?

Not many. Only the people most important to driving revenue. It is amazing what happens when an employee gets a byline. They call their friends. They have a reason to call or email those old accounts left for dead, and give them a reason to take another, fresh look at your brand: without a hard sell. Employees now have a motivating factor to go and post something to StumbleUpon or Digg or Reddit, and become a member of one of those communities. Those folks sitting at quiet desks have just turned into your brand's outcall center.

What happens if they get laid off?

Layoffs are happening with frightening regularity (reminiscent of post 9/11) lately. Quite often, it's because there's no justification to keep these people around when there's no business to keep them busy. Fair enough. But when you consider the fear that greets the notion of bloging or social media on behalf of the brand, think for a moment what will fill up the blogs and tweets of people who are unemployed. Think about the cost of your SEO, your Public Relations, when you're competing with many publishing sources who have nothing but time and a computer to vent endlessly about not being employed by your company anymore.

All of a sudden, getting employees involved in social media doesn't sound that scary.

What do you think?

Please post your ideas in the comments below, email me using the link next to the avatar, or on Twitter @mleis.

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