Welcome to the Escape Blog

There are some great tools online for social interaction - Facebook, LinkdIn, Bebo, etc. depending on who you want to connect with. ie. Facebook for my friends and a bit of B2C, LinkedIn for my online contacts list, etc. What’s more, they are all free, or have small subscription fees if you want extras.

So, if you are thinking about adding social features to your site, and I have had a few conversations about this recently, here’s a thought. Why would anyone want (or need) your social features when they have all this avalailable to them already? What’s so special about you?

This comes into question even more when you are expecting buy-in from customers because, whether you like it or not, there is a business agenda in play. Facebook don’t want my money to use their website; they aren’t expecting me to buy anything - that’s not the deal. With LinkedIn, I pay my subs for the service. But yours?

If I said to you I was going to add some of these features to our website, really, what are the chances of you using them over an existing service which has better funding and is the pure focus of that business. What’s more, if you’re honest, wouldn’t you think there was an underlying agenda? We struggle pursuading people why we give so much stuff away free on our website.

It’s the same when people say to me that they want the BBC news on their home page. WHY? Your customers have the BBC for that!

Getting buy-in from your customer base is not easy and nor should it be. Seth Godin mentioned in one of his books that I read that if you think that your customers wake up in the morning thinking about you, you’re very wrong.

I advertise our company e-newsletter, Facebook Group, my Twitter account and my LinkedIn profile to customers at every opportunity (oops, I did it again) but I can’t make them sit up and care.

Why not focus on something that would really add value? Why not ask your customers what that would be?