christina's blog

You’re a Thought Leader in your chosen profession who has built a business that has been recognized locally, regionally, and nationally by your peers and other colleagues.  You are hitting your profit margins even in this recession, and you are primed for growth. 

But where are you in the social space?

The Maryland, DC, and Pennsylvania divisions of Clifton Gunderson, LLP, a nationwide firm of certified public accountants and consultants, is an example of a professional services company that routinely produces Thought Leadership pieces including white papers, webinars, and E-blasts to communicate with its customers.  Yet the company struggles with cutting edge, innovative methods of effectively distributing these ideas to its target audience.

In a recent post to our social pages we noted that the nation’s largest property and casualty insurer, State Farm launched a Facebook page for its Latino customers called State Farm Latino.  The company recognized that there are 13.5 million Latinos on Facebook, and cited this sizeable number as a key reason for launching the dedicated page

Our recent attendance at the SXSW Interactive conference was a great reminder of all of the ways you can keep your audience engaged using social media. The folks at SXSW used these tips masterfully, and we used some of them ourselves. Although all business events are not of the scale as a SXSW, we thought we would share them with our audience as you consider your participation in future events.

Before the Conference

Your company is cooking with gas in the social space.  You have 50,000 Likes on Facebook and 10,000 followers on Twitter.  You are engaging your customers in the social space, and many of your Likes and followers seem so interested in the content of your posts, they come back to comment on your page on a regular basis.  Yes, it appears that you may now sit back and relax as life on the social front is going unbelievably well.

Coined by Joel Kurtzman, editor-in-chief of the Booz, Allen & Hamilton magazine, Strategy & Business, the term “Thought leader” is business jargon for an entity that is recognized for having innovative ideas.  A related subject, Thought Leadership Marketing, has emerged as the strategic positioning of a company or brand to differentiate itself from other brands in the area of intellectual property; intangible property that is the result of creativity.

This blog post is in no way an endorsement of today’s reclamation of the House of Representatives by Republicans. However, all of us can stand to learn from TV Network C-SPAN’s use of social media to get the word out about the transition of power, and use of the social space for the purpose of political engagement.

In these last few days before holiday vacation officially begins, you have probably noticed a steep decline in chatter on your social sites. That's because although they may not be telling you, your customers are probably “checked out.”  While they may be trying to focus on business, in their minds, they are probably sitting by the fireside at their family home in the woods, sipping on spiked egg nog and waiting for a memorable visit from Santa.

So what do you do?  The old cliche is true - if you can't beat them, join them.

As a business owner, you are probably already aware that prospective employees are trolling your website right now trying to get more information on your open positions.  It is assumed that job seekers often review the corporate websites of companies where they would like to find themselves employed to learn more about a company's corporate culture, mission and vision, and how to sell themselves to the company as their ideal candidate.