Your 24/7 Brand: Fire Extinguisher or Smoke Alarm?

Where is Your Fire Extinguisher?

When is the last time someone asked you the metrics for the "About", "Who We Are" or in a few cases, "Press Materials" area of your website? Have you ever asked a customer their impression of your company after reading that section? If you are like most organizations, the "Who We Are" section of the web is treated like the company's fire extinguishers hanging on the wall:

1. Bought once. (READ: Outdated)
2. Encased in glass. (READ: Not dynamic)
3. Not proactive, but reactive.
   
4. Used in case of emergency only. (Read:Ignored 99% of the time) and...
   
5. Most employees couldn't tell you where it is. (Read: Not wel-integrated into the company's overall strategy)

Smoke Alarms

I would submit this area of an organization's website needs to be treated more like the smoke alarms in your house.

1. Located properly throughout the home. (In this case, the web.)
   
2. Everyone knows where they are. (Read: Strategic area of the site.)
   
3. Tested for functionality throughout the year. (Read: Dynamic and updated continuously.)
4. Proactive. Warn of impending trouble ahead of time. (Read: Mechanism available to warn of danger and react to it.)
   

My manager quotes this mantra often:

"Many businesses and non-profits fail to realize the web is their only marketing entity which is accessible 24-7. "

Let that marinate a second. In the web marketing arena, everyone tends to focus on the metrics tied to revenue - click through, conversion, bounce rate, page views, visits, et al. Revenue is what pays the bills, our shareholders, and us. I give this only so much credence. My personal view is, hey animals can count. What separates humans from the animals is our ability to think and reason.

What am I saying?

All the click-throughs in the world will not protect your company from a boycott, moral scandal, socially irresponsible investment, or a lawsuit. It will,however, for sure impact your brand, your image, your revenue, and your future. Hard and Fast. When something goes down, rest assured the "Who We Are" section of an organization's website is the first place the media, detractors, customers,etc. will head looking for ammunition.

The fact is in today's global economy, consumers are more socially, politically, and environmentally conscious than ever in history. Like it or not, these beliefs now dictate consumer purchasing decisions. Same goes for online. People are evaluating your company or institution based on its environmental policies, commitment to diversity, reputation of its leadership, human rights policies, etc. These things need to be clearly stated on an organization's website, whatever that position is, with a mechanism for discussion or feedback from your customers. Then my smoke alarm analogy comes into play.

Exploring Social Media: Test Driving FriendFeed

Google has created what I term a "Twitter on steroids" tool called FriendFeed. It consolidates your shared feed reader items, blog posts, youtube clips, flickr stream,etc into one RSS streamable feed. You may also share it on your Facebook profile page.
Again I'm giving it a test drive.Not sure it will stay, but blogging for class gives me the freedom to try these things out and report my impressions which is awesome.

So far, my feeling is "eh". It is nice not to have to run 5 different RSS feeds or html gadgets to your blog or portal page. I don't post videos to YouTube yet. I do see potential for it with broadcast networks who utilize all the content tools listed above and then some. It would be nice to subscribe to 1 feed for everything CNN sends out on the election, as an example. .Don't know if it will take off organically like Twitter did, and being a Google product, I expect the environment will be more stable. Judging from the 'tweets' I read, Twitter is like a temperamental sports car -- breaks down a lot but when its running, there's nothing better.

In general, I can't help but wonder when we reach a saturation point. Some links and subscriptions I have are really "just in case", as in just in case they say something profound I need to know. Jennifer, the Chief Curiousity Officer(you guys have the bomb-diggiest titles!) at Brains on Fire, went into this this week on their blog and it is very thought-provoking. She also asks if we now need "sub social networks" such as the do-it-yourself ones on Ning.

I commented on Jennifer's post that I got all excited to joining Facebook, but I'm not sure why now. MySpace I use to keep up with my younger cousins mostly. I do think Ning communities have some legs, because you don't feel like you are jumping into the wild blue yonder. You know you have something in common with the folks in the group, and you are all there for some specific purpose. Full disclosure: I joined the Society for Word Of Mouth run by Church of the Customer's Ben and Jackie. In the case of this community,you know the mods have a lot of credibility which creates a level of trust I still don't have in the 'big 2' (MySpace and Facebook). They also have a large network of marketing practitioners that I'm looking forward to learning from and sharing with.

What do you think? Are we reaching the sensory overload level in social media? Let me hear from you on this. --Krista

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