Six of one…
Imagine you are an advertiser and you know you should be using tools like Twitter and Facebook but whenever you go to either site to set it up, you get overwhelmed and bewildered and you talk yourself out of it. You’re busy. You don’t have time to invest in this. You’re doing just fine without it.
Along comes your ad rep from your local newspaper and he/she has something new to offer you outside of the usual banner ads and 3X5 print ads and corner peels and interstitials (inter-huh?). This time they mention something about helping you get on tools like Twitter and Facebook. And after they do that, they tell you that for a nominal monthly fee, your business will be in prime real estate, beachfront property on their very heavily-trafficked website (Yay, AP says I can type ‘website’ now! Oh wait, I’ve been doing that for years.)
Well hell, what a deal! Sign me up!
Okay, now imagine you are me. You’re @stephromanski (I’m testing the WP plugin for @anywhere there, sorry) and you’ve begun getting these businesses set up on Twitter and Facebook. Once they’re good to go, the business person will be in charge of their own destiny there and they can tweet and/or post status updates as much as they want.
But here is your minor dilemma: You know they’ll mainly be using one of those tools, either Facebook or Twitter. So if they choose to use Facebook for all their updating, you have to feed those updates to their Twitter account so that those tweets will populate your advertiser Twitter List widget that sits on the prime beachfront property. BUT if they predominantly use Twitter to update, you have to rely on a dodgy Facebook app that sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t for feeding tweets to their Facebook fanpage.
Which is the better option for the businessperson who is usually too busy and may not fully “get” how to use the tools? Which way would be easier for them?
The argument for having them use Facebook is that they are already likely to have a personal Facebook page and perhaps they sort of know their way around it whereas Twitter is completely foreign to them. I know @ev addressed Twitter’s usability at their Chirp conference and I found myself nodding furiously at that whole section of his speech.
On the other hand, if the advertiser is not on either tool, which is the best way to guide them? Fanpages are kind of a bitch to work with, IMO. It seems like it would be harder to teach them (oh yes, in addition to setting them up, you must then spend an hour or so with them and teach them how to use it) to get to and update the fanpage then it would be to teach them to open up Tweetdeck where they can handle everything.
Is it six of one, half dozen of the other? Do you tackle each advertiser individually, gauge their needs and guide them accordingly? Do you set up a system of ‘This is how you’re going to do it’ to save time?
These are the questions flying around my head right now. Any input in the comments would be greatly appreciated 
Tags: advertisers, Facebook, fanpages, Social Media, twitter
Hi Stephanie. It's a good question, and one we've tackled with some workarounds on a niche project aimed at the home improvement industry (http://revamp.mvvoice.com).
I should probably write a post about the lessons we've learned there, but to your point: we set up a fairly rigid protocol for how the posts get categorized and choked down the WP admin a lot to keep things flowing smoothly.
I also spend a fair amount of time coaching and encouraging. I don't see any way around that (and I think it's probably the key to providing customer service that makes long-term relationships with local advertisers).
I hope you do write that post, I'd love to read it.
I am, as we speak, scheduled to visit 4 advertisers in the next two days to coach them on all of this. 4 advertisers who have signed on and are actually excited to have us handle the main hurdle which is the setup. I agree completely that fostering that kind of relationship with our advertisers can only be a good thing.
I know that I'd really like to be signing these folks up to not only be part of my feed, but for a bit more I would like to have them paying for someone at my company to maintain their tools.
I keep seeing so many poorly kept tools, that I think the value for many just drops through the floor and they disengage. I really want to see news agencies step up on the business end and become a real aid in developing and maintaining the online identities of our clients.
Totally tried that initially. Learned that – at least here – they're not quite ready for that yet. Many of them don't understand this stuff yet. I'm thinking with this, sort of bridge that we're doing, it will introduce them to the concept and as long as we're open about the need to nurture your social media accounts – immediate results just don't happen unless you're really really famous – then I think we'll be able to move to that next step.