Dear Little Miss Social
I own a small, established vintage clothing boutique in Melbourne and have heard that social media might be helpful for my business. I also have a young niece who is studying an Arts degree and is keen to take over the full control of my social media responsibilities in her spare time. She’s smart and spends most of the day on Facebook already, so I think it might be a good fit. What are your thoughts?
Yours Sincerely, Jessica Francis
Dear Gentle Reader
Let a person under the age of 30 loose on your social media? What a frightful thought! Little Miss Social would never countenance it. As dear Mr. Wilde once quipped, “I am not young enough to know everything.”
No, no, no, the social media for your business is too important a responsibility to be handled by anybody but yourself. What’s demanded is a seasoned and steady hand at the tiller. It’s still business as usual you know.
It’s easy to forget the ‘social’ in ‘social media’. This is a milieu which operates on human behavioural insight, drawn-out courtships, intelligence, wit and a healthy appreciation of the double-entendre.
It is you who must drive this initiative. How ever would your niece – as charming a girl as I’m sure she is – manage the process of discoursing with customers? What missives would she post? Little Miss Social sees too much flotsam in the streams already. How ever would she respond to a line of question or possess the mental dexterity to intercept and blunt the arrow of a customer complaint?
Conversation Gentle Reader – social media is the art of conversation. Does she write with aplomb? Could she be relied upon to furnish the appropriate rejoinder in a social media conversation thread? I think not. How could she?
Or at the very least does she possess a deep working knowledge of your wares, your vintage beauties? Would she be able to discuss upon them with confidence and authority, or would she merely peddle them with the brashness of a camel trader at a market bizarre?
No, Gentle Reader – we want you. It must be you. Pray, who else?