A question that seem to be getting asked in the meeting rooms of language service providers now is "Who is going to handle social media within our organization?" The answer is usually a low-level admin person or junior project manager. The questions that do not seem to be getting asked is "Do we have something worthwhile to present?" and "How are we going to monitor the benefit of these exercises?"
The amount of return on the investment in social media will be directly proportional to the quality of the content that is generated and posted. There are a few (a very few) in any organization who have some informed comment to make and this is obvious as most corporate social networking has very little of interest to offer. Social media for companies mostly comes down to generating anything to fill space on a regular basis.
To make social media worthwhile someone in the organization has to put in the time and thought to actually say something that will be of value to the reader. Such content only comes from someone within the organization who has experience in the industry, expertise at many levels, a critical eye for what is important and what is trash, and a flair for presenting their message in as few words as possible. It never can come from the lowest admin person in the company to whom the task is usually delegated and who has to fit it in when not busy answering phone calls and making coffee.
Most often top-level people in charge of company strategy in tandem with marketing people have the wherewithal to contribute valuable material. However, it is most often the case that these people are too busy to contribute and instead allow junior staff to merely fill space by posting links to articles vaguely related to the company’s business and post mind-numbing profiles of staff members.
Newsletters are another area in which many small and medium sized LSPs are investing time. Unfortunately, newsletters have degenerated into something less than a total waste of time. If the newsletter from your company includes the personal interests of the employees of your company, trivia questions, sympathetic statements for the latest disaster victims, applauding yourself for whatever it is that you think you are doing right, etc., then it is of about the same value as an email promoting the sale of replica watches, and will receive the same treatment.
Newsletters can be a valuable way of getting out to customers and resources with relevant information, important changes to processes, and updates that make a difference to how things get done. As with all marketing, it has to be about your customer or the intended reader. It has to be information that they care about and will solve their problems. When producing a newsletter, if you have these objectives in mind, and can focus on the needs of the reader and not on yourself and what is happening in your own little world, the result will certainly get a good hearing.
