TechIntersect

Last year I wrote about how teachers can stay relevant in the classroom by doing non-teaching summer work that is related to what they teach. This summer, I am once again back at Twin Valley, a privately-owned rural telecommunications company, doing the teacher-internship thing. One thing I enjoy about working here is paying attention to and thinking about things I normally don’t think about- here it is the telecommunications industry. (Perhaps I should since I actually teach a networking class.)

I enjoy reading the trade publications that are floating around here. Guess I’ve always been a reader. As a kid, I read everything that wasn’t nailed down, including our set of World Book encyclopedias. Jack Kilby, Kansas native & co-inventor of the microchip had the same habit. Jack Kilby once repurposed a dental instrument into an electronic resistor shaping tool because he’d once read about a unique tool in a dental supply catalog.

Convergence of ideas is a funny thing. I’ve read & written and talked a lot about social media in recent months. I just read the latest edition of Rural Telecom Magazine, and what is the lead story? Social Media: The New Marketing Imperative by Scott Briscoe. It’s a great article that shows even rural telephone companies need to be thinking about the implications of social media.

I can’t stress enough the importance of everyone in business to at least take a look at the trends in social networking & social media. Chances are great that even if you choose not to participate, if you have any customers at all, you will be talked about online. If you are not participating, you are forfeiting a chance to have a say in the discussion about your own company. But as Briscoe points out, it’s not all about the products, it is about being involved in the discussion:

Social media is not a particularly effective means of directly marketing your company’s products and services, and that’s especially true of rural telecommunications providers…

Telcos should be looking to either build or be a significant part of a locality’s online socializing, and you don’t do that by only talking about the new cable being dropped or the new phone services offered. Telcos always have been about more than simply offering services. They have been part of the fabric of the communities they serve—whether it’s sponsoring the local hockey team, covering local high school athletics or sponsoring the community photo contest. This is the spirit in which their foray into social media is most likely to provide maximum gain.

The days of carefully crafted press releases being the only source of information are over. According to Briscoe, it is time to test the waters of social media in your business or get left behind.

It might be tempting to take a wait-and-see approach to social media. One of the problems, however, is that if you’re waiting until you have all the information before jumping in, you’ll always be on the sidelines—the technology simply changes too fast…

Give it a few weeks of study, but then do something. Don’t worry too much about getting it wrong. It will take time to build up any sort of following anyway, and you’ll be learning the whole time. You’ll discover what tactics work and which ones should be scrapped; what takes too much time to do and what is too simple and quick to skip.

This excellent advice has held true since the beginning of online discourse and applies to all industries, telecom or otherwise. Lurk & learn first, then jump in when you feel comfortable contributing. But do jump in, the water’s fine!

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