Ever see those silver silos looming across the landscape of agricultural communities? Farmers use them to store grain. Unfortunately, many organizations suffer a silo mentality when it comes to online media. They store online communication efforts in departmental silos that put up barriers to communication and pollination of ideas.
Being natives of rural Texas, both of us believe online marketing is a lot like farming. You decide what crop your market likes. You plant the seeds. You fertilize it. And finally you gather a bountiful harvest that captivates your customers and prospects.
That can’t happen in online marketing if silos block collaboration.
In this Clairiti Clip, we explain how silos are only good for storing grain and why your company needs to tear down its internal information silos.
Transcript
Brad: Well we always talk to our clients and hear out there from our clients and potential clients; when they start to go through their business plans or what they’ve been doing in social website; even on their content when they’re thinking about all of these problems. They’ve silo’d each one of their pieces of business. So you have a group over here working on social media, you have a group over here that maintains the website, you have a group over here that generates content. Some in marketing, some aren’t; and they’ve just segmented their business and not pulled it all together to work together.
Robert: So we’ve seen companies and organizations where the people doing Twitter were in literally a separate building.
Brad: A separate building.
Robert: And no communication. So talk about how that intercommunication is so important in getting it right.
Brad: Well you have to be working together so that you can maintain that message that you’re trying to portray. You can have different segments within the categories of your company. For example, the client we worked with that had separate entities in separate buildings; one was a recruiting part of the business, one was interaction with students and one was student activities. You can still all work together though and communicate. Learn how to share each other’s content or posts when it works together so that you’re all communicating the right messaging and driving that engagement out there. Not just for social, but for website, too.
Robert: Well and don’t build walls because people all become really turf conscious. Marketing can’t talk to PR in communications. And in the world of online that’s going to hurt you.
Brad: Well and the other thing that we see, too, is that everybody thinks they have their own message, right? ‘Well, I’m Student Recruiting, I have a different message than you do as Marketing’ or whatever. Or ‘you’re just trying to talk to these type of people.’ That’s not true, you’re all trying to talk to each other. What you’ll find is when you silo yourself like that, people will segment themselves out there in your social media audience or online audience as well. They’re not going to follow you in every thing, right? If you’re not giving them different content.
Robert: All right, so the lesson here today is that online marketing is a little bit like agriculture in that you’re harvesting crops, but don’t put them in a silo, otherwise you’re likely to fail.
Brad: Absolutely.
Robert: That’s the Clairiti Clip of the week. Thanks.
