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So what’s all this ruckus about social media?
so-whats-all-this-ruckus-about-social-media<p>So the latest and greatest (or so the universe tells me) is that social media and social bookmarking is the wave of the marketing future. We’re actually a tad behind … but not too far. We should always look at what the competition is doing; and not all competition is direct. For example, the Majestic Theater on Overland Road doesn’t just compete with Edwards 21 in Boise, but also Blockbuster, Hollywood Video, Netflix, ice skating, mall hopping, drag racing, papier-mâché and anything else someone would do on the weekend.</p> <p>So, where our the competition may not necessarily be doing social media, the rest of the world is. And, in order to make shopping at CPS easier, we are going to join the bandwagon.</p> <p>Our first step to jumping on board will be to plug into the social media network. We will do this by making the pages/items/articles in our website accessible to social networks like:Facebook,MySpace, Twitter,LinkedIn,Digg, Buzz Up, Google Bookmarks, Delicious,StumbleUpon, and Favorites.</p> <div></div> <p>Here’s what each one of these do:</p> <ol> <li>Social Networks: Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, LinkedIn. There are some minor differences between these, but essentially they all allow you to connect with your friends and colleagues online. Think of these as a large Rolodex of people you know. Rather than a name and phone number on the Rolodex card you have a name, email address, photo albums, favorite songs, favorite political articles, recipes, professional projects you’re working on, and whatever else your friend wants to share. You can “unfriend” your more “profane” friends if you need to.</li> <li>Share Content: Digg. My wife’s grandmother likes to send me newspaper clippings in the mail. Digg is one of the biggest buckets of news out there, and this is essentially what it does … but with a twist. When grandmother Ruby sends me those articles, imagine if there was a sticky note on top that said 14,236 other people read this article and they “digged” it. I now know that there are 14,236 others that thought this article was worth reading. I don’t just have to take Ruby’s word for it.</li> <li>Social Bookmarking: Buzz Up, Google Bookmarks, Delicious, StumbleUpon, Favorites. I want you to think about all of your favorite sites … news sites, recipe sites, sports sites, CPS home page, or the SAM login. You’ve probably saved these to your favorites or bookmarks. Now imagine that all of your bookmarks are saved to where others can see what you’ve bookmarked. (Get it? It’s social because others can get involved. Quit hogging your bookmarks to yourself! C’mon, share! Pass them around.) For the don’t-stalk-me-conscious this may seem invasive, but for others it fulfills the purpose of what social media is all about … building community with people that have similar interests. You could discover that there are 324,453 others that like rock/paper/scissor tournaments.</li> </ol> <p>If there are people out there that like rock/paper/scissor tournaments (and I kid you not, I had a former colleague rank twelfth in the nation … ask me about it), then there aredefinitelypeople out there that like packaging. And it just so happens that in just two weeks I’ve found 108 other people in the world, so far, who have bookmarked our site via Delicious. Those 99 other people have made notes regarding our site like (ahem):</p> <ul> <li>“Best price, ship to Canada.”</li> <li>“No tall tea tins available at this site.”</li> <li>“Found while searching for travel containers for our favorite spices, oils, etc.”</li> </ul> <p>This is incredible information. Someone shopped around and thought we had the best price and liked that we ship to Canada. Adding tall tea tins to our inventory might be a good idea. Someone found us while looking for travel-friendly containers.</p> <p>Why CPS? Because there are millions of users (literally, millions) in each of these networks. (I’ll admit … I belong to each one of these. YES, I DO have friends,real friends, thank you very much.) Millions of people use these services (Facebook,Digg, etc) to:</p> <ol> <li>Research and organize products prior to purchase</li> <li>Read news and current events</li> <li>Organize sites and information they find while browsing the vast Internet</li> <li>Communicate with family, friends, and colleagues</li> <li>Promote events, news, products, services and more.</li> </ol> <p>By plugging in we hope to make it easier for our customers to do these 5 things with our products and brand.</p>
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