When Marty McFly rocks his guitar solo in ‘Johnny B. Goode’ at his parents’ high school dance in Back to the Future, he leaves the shocked crowd slack-jawed at what they’ve just heard. The line he drops is something like, “I guess you guys aren’t ready for that yet… but your kids are gonna love it.”
Welcome to my day job. I work in a 1.0 industry (construction). My main goal is managing my company’s relationship with the independent dealers who sell our product, and most of them are small business owners in their 50s who buy our products via distribution partners and resell/install to homeowners. These dealers are old school. Great, hardworking, dedicated businesspeople… but old school.
During a recent flight I read through Todd Defren’s excellent new (and free!) eBook on social media marketing called “Brink.” It’s filled with fantastic nuggets on how to “make an entrance” into social media, including tips on blogger relations, creating content using a variety of media channels, and reaching out using Facebook, Twitter and social bookmarking. Reading it made me excited and disheartened at the same time.
How do you implement social media tools and strategies if your audience isn’t ready for it yet? My audience – our network of dealers - can barely handle e-mail. I’ve had several phone conversations with dealers where I’ve had to explain to them how to open Internet Explorer. At length. A lot of them only want to send and receive information via mail or fax. (Apparently a fax machine is this thing from the early 1990s that you fed paper into and then that paper was magically transported to other fax machines).
Last year I created a secure extranet site for our dealers. It includes a blog where I post news items about our products and programs; forums for dealers to share information and best practices with each other; a media center where they can download .pdfs of our literature and view presentations from conferences; and lead management tools. Despite the fact that this group of dealers has hundreds of combined years of experience in their industry and could benefit greatly from more interaction, the utilization of this extranet community is near zero. No comments on blog posts, no posts or discussions in the forums, and rarely do people access files from the media center. It has the potential to be a great community for these dealers. But a community doesn’t exist if there’s no one there.
So what do I do? How much do you try to drag an audience along? How much should your communications strategy reflect where your audience currently is, versus where you’d like them to be? How do you keep from pulling a Marty McFly?
I’m currently running into this exact issue with our organization (health care), so no worries, you’re not alone.
I’ve struggled myself with the current state vs. future state dilemma. I’d say what’s most important is finding the right vehicles to reach your audience. If it’s faxes hot off the 1974 press, then go with faxes. If it’s an online, collaborative community with photo and video-sharing options, then you go that route. Point is, you need to reach your customers/stakeholders where they are. In your case, it sounds like you’re stuck with some of the more traditional tools.
But, that shouldn’t stop you from learning and pushing these tools as solutions. Keep learning and engaging online and then use that information in your day job and keep suggesting these kinds of solutions–again, when appropriate. Sometimes, you need to build momentum slowly… :)
Great post Amy. I’ve had to deal with some of the same issues and feel your pain of wanting to push your communications tools and tactics into 2003, but being stuck in 1983. While you have to keep reaching customers the way they want to be reached, you have to keep in mind the next generation of customers, business leaders and media as well.
The young people in the business will continue to rise into more senior positions and as they do they will expect Web 2.0 tools to be in the mix for effective business. I think you’re doing the right thing by getting a head start on building the blogs, forums and tools that will certainly be used down the road, even if they are sadly under utilized right now.
I appreciate what you had to say and the ideas brought up in the comments. I too, like the rest of you, am trying to get a 1.0 community into a web 2.0 environment. I’m working with a local real estate agent who is wanting to get more involved in this area but is still, well, clueless about many of the concepts. Also, I’m trying to figure out how to market to a people in a medium sized city that is still very 1.0 as a group.
Arik and Christine make very good points though. Keep those older channels open for the 1.0 crowd to satisfy them. While, at the same time, opening up web 2.0 channels for the younger crowd who will be coming into power soon.
Thanks for the ideas. Good luck.
I’ve run across the same thing with my son’s school and PTA! A rather web 1.0 experience. Looking at his class contact list, a couple of parents haven’t put down an email address (and don’t USE email)!
Until this year, all announcements were xeroxed and put into the students’ Friday Folders (must equate to a couple of trees per kid by the end of the year).
I’ve volunteered to do an email version and we’ve converted 40% of parents to an email with links, rather than paper..
But here’s some suggestions!
1. If they can’t open Internet Explorer, then remembering their login and password and URL to an extranet will be a roadblock. Could you organize a competition/incentive where they could win something ( a great prize targeted to your audience). Require them to login in and look around to sign up. If there’s a large enough incentive, they’ll go through the pain of doing it, and you can at least get them in there to see what’s valuable…
2. Phone: I’ve seen this with nurse friends of mine – don’t like the computer, but love their cellphone. Construction managers will be on their cellphones all day, won’t they?
Could you reach these guys using Text messages?
3. Or get them on a mini-conf call where another builder gives a 10 case study (something great they did with your products that others may not have encountered yet).
Good luck!