So half term week i had a bit of an experiment, that of no connectivity, turn the phone off, no internet, no emails NOTHING.
Why may you ask would i want to do this? well I work in the Internet industry, and have done for a number of years, as you would expect I tweet, blog, facebook, email on a daily basis. So just for a trial I thought that I would use our French trip as an experiment for me to turn all this off and go ‘au naturel‘ to see the results for myself.
This all started with an EasyJet flight to sunny La Rochelle in western France and a weeks stay at a lovely Gite in the area… So picture the scene at Bristol airport, phone turned off and filed deep into my hand luggage and not to be turned on until 7 days later.
The internet results it turns out as expected saw my reach fall, nothing too unexpected here. For example on Twitter if you have used the tool Twitter Grader you’ll know this uses an algoritum to measure your power and reach on twitter. For me no tweeting in 1 week has seen my grade fall to 97.6 out of 100 and I have fallen 4 spots to 11 in Exeter.
But in this week I had 16 new followers and i did not Tweet at all!!
Similar falls were also experienced in Facebook and YouTube on a grading, reach and experience level – if this is what you want to measure yourself by.
The results on a personal level i think though were far more telling, for example i went to an Antiques Fair on the outskirts of La Rochelle and asked the french man in charge ‘is this advertised on the internet‘ or ‘est-ce la publicité sur Internet‘ his reply ‘Oui, mais nous aimons aussi parler aux gens‘ or ‘yes but we also like to talk to people‘.
So I guess that kind of sums the whole week up for me, there can be no doubt that digital marketing is here to stay and many companies have this at the cornerstone of their marketing philosophy which is right, BUT dont forget all the stuff that got you there, the simple engaging with customers, talking to them face to face – not everyone talks a digital language yet. When they do we need to make sure it’s made easy for them – its not daunting……
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