E-Perceptions
I sat through a talk this week on how business site selections pick communities. The speaker, a recognized international scholar, presented on how site selection teams limit the number of sites using Internet first. Interesting enough, the Internet has become their tool of analysis when seeking to reduce the number to a reasonable group. They used tools like google, altavista, Lexus/Nexus, and other search tools. The message to communities was "if the wonderful reasons your community is a great place to live are not searchable online, your not going to be considered." The ol attitude "we got a great community, why do you just come and visit" will no longer work. Interesting enough, I think their is also a leadership message. Google yourself, kinda scary, but then look at what comes up. The world, and your community (business/organization), may have a completely different perspective on who you are. What is missing, may create perceptions just as much as what is there.
So, I did a google search.. and to my dismay, most of what comes up first (with exception of a couple of talks I have given) really doesn't describes me or what I do very well. I had to do a targeted search with "bio" as a key word to get to what I really do.. yep.. thats pretty vain searching for your own bio. What caused me the most concern was when I searched for my unit's name.. no where did I see any accomplishments pop up. Granted, there is a certain vanity in exploring your unit's online self, but the speaker made it clear to me that leaders need to insure that if they have a strong online message they want to others to follow. Your unit's image needs to be online just as much as it needs to be shared face to face. And even more important, information that might distract from your unit's image, does not need to be online.
Yes.. I know you might be saying to yourself.. this is just common sense.. We all tend to go to the Internet first when researching something, so we should expect others to do the same when making initial impressions of us. The question is whether we are using the Internet as effective tool to help those new to us know us and our products better. Share your thoughts on this
Posted at 07:07AM Aug 02, 2006 by mowen in General |