Richard's Blog

 Archive for the ‘facebook’ Category

With so many conferences and money (both investments and corporate marketing spending) being spent on often trendy or perceived fun products and services – we try to assess which are good use of resources for Therap to be involved with from a marketing and support perspective.

In general our approach is to encourage our team members to use many of these services so they have first hand experiences. That makes for more effective internal discussions about what is possible. We also communicate with our users in so many manners.

While Farmville doesn’t allow outside apps to create products that integrate into Farmville, we do have buttons for flair on facebook.

We also have increasingly been posting some video’s to YouTube.

Our You Tube videos tend to be informative which may be why they haven’t really taken off on page views yet (maybe eventually). Topics like electronic signatures, documentation for surveyors and MAR’s don’t seem to be as popular as Lady Gaga’s music videos.

Clearly important pieces of what we do include making sure we have proper medicaid approved electronic signatures and documentation, ensuring a user interface that allows direct support professionals to accurately and cost effectively enter data, working with providers and states on various state and federal requirements, managing our company owned equipment infrastructure and more.

But there are choices on how to communicate with users.

We tend not to use Twitter very often. Justin does a bit. I have tried it and don’t get it. I had tried Second Life a couple of years ago and thought it was fun – but it had huge bandwidth requirements. Its seemed fine for someone like Starwood Hotels trying to hype their new Aloft brand hotel – where they could supplement whatever they spent on Second Life with a huge PR budget. But where does that leave companies without those type of budgets?

John Burton recently headlined a blog post: Twitter, Second Life, Mafia Wars: Enterprise-Grade Business Tools or Silly Toys for Business Professionals?. He wrote

Twitter is on top of the world. Twitter is the soup de jour. Twitter is the new black. Twitter is the prom queen and the homecoming king. Twitter is, dare I say, its own religion. Yet in the back of my mind the question remains, is Twitter really a useful business tool, or is it just yet another toy for stressed-out business professionals?

He continues with lots of reasons why twitter and second life haven’t been effective as customer relationship tools.

In Nicolas Carr’s Blog Rough Type he stated

We are now coming to understand that the failure of the once much-hyped virtual world Second Life was inevitable. It was never that the Web would provide an alternative reality. It was that the Web, a labyrinth devised by men, would become reality

John Burton finally concludes with

Which Brings me to the Next Point: Don’t Stalk Your Customers on Twitter! Just Pick Up the $#@! Telephone When They Call

There are so many effective ways to communicate with our users and potential users. Telephone calls, live help chats, webinars, user groups, in person meetings, visits to agencies for training and other discussions, and our conferences. We will continue to monitor new technologies and services and employ them as appropriate and useful. We are very mindful that every minute someone is using Therap is time away from other activities. So our goal is to be efficient and productive in our interactions.

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