The temptation to avoid social networking seems to have a following even within InfoQuest. When I recently announced to everyone that InfoQuest would be maintaining a presence on Twitter through at www.twitter.com/infoquestdotcom, I received several reactions.
You can be sure that those closest to you are more than willing to tell it to you like it is --or at least as it is to them. When I decided to take the Twitter plunge, I took InfoQuest with me hook, line and sinker. Frankly, I was surprised to see a reluctance by some to embrace a new way of communicating with customers. At first I thought maybe its because we're just an old school Internet company and by gosh if the phone, email or live chat aren't good enough then that's just too bad. Until I found out one of the "reluctant" ones was our brilliant 20 something generation X wonder boy Toby. After a bit of shameless good natured fun, Toby was one of the first to jump right in and get the ball rolling through our Twitter Co-Tweet account.
What struck me just as oddly though was a comment from one of our customers when I informed them we were now on Twitter. "No thanks, that's not for me." And that got me to thinking. Was social networking the wave of the future or just a passing fad? If both Toby and our customers have reservations about using services like Twitter where is it all going?
What do you think? How is your company using social networking?