A new stage in the graphical sector has been started. Digital asset management was the hype once, and became reality afterwards. Web2print solutions followed as the next hype, and are pretty much commonplace now. Cross media publishing solutions are still not completely common, but they're getting there. So I can't help but wonder what the next big thing for printing companies will be. Would they dare take the plunge in Social Media Services?
Why could it work?
Printing companies and other graphical service providers have shown a lot of enterprise the last couple of years in providing more than their traditional services. Rather than keeping the focus on print, they expanded their business (often to promote the printing side, of course). And as they are making their way more and more into the strange realms of marketing, maybe they won't have a choice in matters.
Social media has been all the rage the last couple of months and years, but it is also clear that a lot of marketeers are not completely sure how they should approach it. And while there is definitely not a single right way to do things, they might need some help from a party that is interested in long lasting relationships rather than short term profit. A printing company would never pull the scams that some "SEO experts" might be tempted to. Why? Because they want to keep the print orders coming! And in exactly the same way, they might be ideally suited to provide expertise and manpower for the setup of social media campaigns.
Especially because these campaigns can take the current trend of Cross Media Publishing another step further. As always, printing companies seem the only party that are capable of tackling the entire spectrum of services. Social Media rules are still a bit easier to learn than print quality PDF generation.
Challenges
But then again, social media require some very specific know how. Knowledge of the brand, the company, the customers, and so on. While many printing companies have shown time and again that they can master this in marketing campaigns and online solutions, the honesty required by social media might be a bridge too far.
And part of that honesty is the messenger. Who would really care about the message if it is clearly delivered by a paid external party? That is very much against the spirit of the medium. Which isn't to say that there isn't a big possibility for training and guidance in the communication of the message by the right parties.
Conclusion
We'll definitely be focussing on these new opportunities over the next months and years. One part of it is using the social media ourselves (on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, ...). But we're also setting up the first parts of our software for this purpose. We'll try some sample projects on our own for starters (the upcoming personalized URL extension to our website is a first initiative in this direction), and we're more than happy to learn from customers who want to start looking in this direction.