A New Marketing Era
It’s now been eighteen months since the CCDC joined the big wide world of Social Media Marketing, and after a shaky start where we were lucky if we could manage one status update a week and were unsure of what a hashtag was, we have now really hit our stride.
When first embarking on our plan to launch social media profiles to better engage with our user community, we were uncertain as to exactly what we should be talking about. Do we just talk about software releases? Maybe post the odd photo of the building? While we did indeed start with these, over time our Facebook and Twitter profiles have grown into a vibrant community where we discuss user preferences, talk about the company’s social activities, post updates from events we’re attending and share interesting scientific news stories from around the world. Among our most popular Facebook features are “Meet a CCDC staff member”, where we post a photo and a bio of someone in the company, “Featured Structure Friday”, where we post an image of a pertinent structure and details of its authorship, and links to our tutorials and “how-to” videos on our YouTube channel.
But while we feel that Facebook and Twitter are a great way for us to keep our users up to date with our news and developments, we have also found it to be a great way for our users to interact with us, whether it be with development requests, support issues or general enquiries. It allows us to respond rapidly, and to better understand what our users are interested in and what their needs are.
So, if you’re not already following us on Facebook and Twitter, #whynot? Get involved and join our thriving online community by clicking on the icons at the bottom of the page!