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Joakim Hedlund

Web enthusiast

Social Media - why are you even here?

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Many of us have probably been told by various gurus at one point or another that our companies need to be on social media. And gosh darn, there's little doubt that it can do wonders for your relationship with your customers. But - and there's always a 'but' - only if you do it right. For example, if I set up an email account and display that on my website alongside my phone number, my customers would assume that I am reachable on email.

Let's pretend you send me an email asking me when I'm available to do a ten hour project. Pretty straight forward question, right? What if I responded in a timely fashion with "Hi and welcome to Joakim. Please call me on my phone so that I can answer your question"?

I'd be furious.

Yet, we allow it, over and over again.
...yes, I'm talking about Twitter.

More specifically, how TrackingTime, TrackR, New Relic and so many others poorly attempt to be "on social media". I don't see why they even bother. They'd save themselves and their customers a lot of time by just not having an account, as I'd just go the email route right away.

New Relic's response I especially despise - they not only funnel me into some other support flow, but also want me to do their work for them. A software company that is apparently incapable of creating an entry in their own backlog - splendid! Let's give them all our data.

In order to avoid this rant being all negative, I'd like to give a shoutout to Help Scout, iZettle, Discord, LG, Talkdesk, MailChimp and many others that don't force me to repeat myself into oblivion.