Markets are Conversations

“Engagement in these open free-wheeling marketplace exchanges isn’t optional. It’s a prerequisite to having a future. Silence is fatal.”

In Levine et al’s “The Cluetrain Manifesto” he makes it clear that conversations are the new “products” and that corporations should use a human voice to ensure authentic identity. I not only agree with this statement, but I also believe it is an extremely important asset to a business. In contemporary society, maintaining an online presence will determine a company’s success rate.

With the start of the new winter semester, I have been given the opportunity to intern as a social media coordinator at Rogers Television in London. Alongside training in the production crew for live television show “Daytime,” I have been working with the volunteer coordinator and public relations advisor to come up with a strategy to increase Rogers’ online presence. Prior to establishing any content I was asked to review both their website and current online Twitter and Facebook platforms to evaluate what they have been doing and give my personal input on how I could improve their engagement.

The first thing I noticed is that for a communications company, Rogers Television London, was not very active online. Their Facebook page was lacking updated activity and it had minimal “likes” in comparison to their Twitter page followers. However, their Twitter page was mildly active and they were not engaging and creating conversation with their viewers. Rogers’ online presence was minimal and therefore it was my job to come up with some new ideas and strategies to better develop their active content.

With their primary focus on Twitter, I was instructed to come up with new suggestions and tactics to help increase their on-screen persona. To get the ball rolling, so to speak, the following were a few of my suggestions: using the platform “hootsuite” to generate and schedule regular tweets more often, using more visuals such as behind the scenes photos to create a brand personality, implementing more relevant hashtags, and actively engaging with viewers and guests by responding and simply “retweeting” and “favouriting” follower tweets. Although I may not be an expert in social media just yet, I suggested some new ideas that should help shape the way Rogers chooses to generate online content. As the station is still in the process of improving their engagement, I am also continuously learning and gaining new knowledge on social media and how it affects organizations. I am excited to take this new knowledge and implement it to my workplace with the ability to now monitor and gather the results of its effectiveness.

If you are interested to see what Rogers has posted over the last few weeks here is a link to their twitter page. Note: I have not posted any content on this page yet I have just proposed new ideas and suggestions on how to improve it. However, I should be starting to generate content on both Twitter handles @RTVLondon and @DaytimeLondon in the near future!