Social Media for Snails

Almost three years ago, I wrote a blog post called The New Chicago Tribune Sucks and guess what? They still do.
I still have great relationships with many fine reporters and editors at the Tribune, so I don’t want to criticize them, but wow, I just can’t believe how slow and off the mark the Tribune is with their response. I call it “social media for snails.” Here’s why: the Tribune just responded to my post this month, almost three years after I wrote it. Why didn’t they respond before? And their response has nothing to do with what I wrote. I was talking about the design of the newspaper, but their comment at my blog included, “The Client Services dept at the Tribune are more than welcome to help with any home delivery subscriptions, or store purchases of the paper.”

Nowhere in my blog did I complain about home delivery, subscriptions, or purchases. So why write that in a comment? It shows they aren’t paying attention to their online coverage or to what people actually write.

So this is something we can all learn from: remember to do frequent searches of your name, or sign up for a Google Alert to find out what people are saying so that you can respond. And read what people are actually writing so that your response makes sense.

Too bad one of the biggest newspapers doesn’t understand these simple tips.