EllisLab Social Media Policy
Yesterday EllisLab posted an official social media policy, which included the consolidation of their Twitter accounts (only @EllisLab will be used for now). They also shared how you can reach out to them:
We love hearing from you and we enjoy having real, direct, one-on-one conversations with our users. You are welcome at any time to contact us directly with questions, requests, concerns, or just to say hi by emailing team@ellislab.com, or any individual on the team with first.last@ellislab.com.
Please take advantage of contacting them directly via email. If you have praise, frustrations, concerns, suggestions or ideas the best way to voice those are directly to them. I’ve discussed several things with them over email and they’ve always been thoughtful and helpful with their responses.
EllisLab also clarified how they intend to use Twitter. First, with their take on the social media:
Social networking is great for notification, for broadcasting small bites of information to a group of followers, and for pointing to permanent content that exists elsewhere.
That’s one of the things that Twitter is good at. But it’s not all, if you use it properly. I see some great companies and brands use Twitter very, very effectively. On a smaller scale, Twitter engagement and discussions have been crucial to my ExpressionEngine training business.
EllisLab is free, however, to use Twitter as they see fit. If they don’t think it’s a good medium for them then they are right to not use it to engage with the community. I hope this means they’ll have a big presence at EECI, meetups and other gatherings, so the community can interact with many of the EllisLab team one-on-one.
It is bad at working with others to solve specific complex problems, troubleshoot issues, or having in-depth conversations that result in understanding how to build better software. In short, real conversations with you help us make and improve things in a meaningful way, and 140 character bursts into the void do not.
It is definitely not good at any of that but I don’t think that is what the community wanted.
The ExpressionEngine community on Twitter (#eecms) has thrived and grown stronger and closer because it has used the medium to communicate, converse, share and learn. There are definitely times where the negativity bubbles up and gains more attention than I think it should. But the net result is good. We are a perfect example of why Twitter isn’t just a broadcast medium.
The EE community doesn’t need EllisLab engaging in social media to thrive. We have built our own tools and will continue to do it on our own; here on EE Insider, over at Devot:ee, on Twitter using the #eecms hashtag, in the weekly EE Help Chat, in person at EECI, and at the meetups around the world.
Posted on Aug 30, 2012 by Ryan Irelan
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Nevsie — 09:35 on 08.30.2012
Another splendid post.. funnily enough visited after Brandon Kelly’s Tweet!
But is it just me, or is everyone else seeing a slowdown in twitter in general? Anyhow…
EE forums slowly ceased, twitter and the hash tag being limited, speak to us if you want - but wait 2 days of pay for enterprise!
Bring on Streams in Pyro, and Concrete5, and i already find i am using EE less - even though it is my preferred system.
Jeremy Ricketts — 13:32 on 08.31.2012
Another thoughtful post. Thanks!
Jeremy Ricketts — 13:57 on 08.31.2012
By the way… part of me wishes they would spend less time thinking about official social media strategies and more time working on the product. Half the addons I purchase for every EE install feel much more like “fixes” rather than “enhancements.” Half the content being entered into these sites is done using Low Variables. Half my time working on an EE project is spent making the client’s backend admin panel look somewhat professional and manageable (thank god for Zoo Flexible Admin and the Nerdery admin theme override). Woops, I guess I’m just griping now.
Christopher L. Jorgensen — 23:33 on 09.04.2012
Here’s my thoughts on this:
They should retire the @EllisLab account as well. It’s a snoozer. They don’t update even daily and they seldom engage people in any meaningful manner. Go back though a month of replies and posts and see how many you would have made if you were @EllisLab. Now do a search on ExpressionEngine and codeigniter and mojomotor and #EE and #eecms and see how many opportunities @EllisLab missed to engage customers.
What EllisLab needs is a ticketing system. I file a ticket with my hosting service and it is closed in an hour. Post to the support forums and I waste my time typing: http://mojomotor.com/forums/viewthread/223696/ I spent all damn day bitching about them on their own forums and not even an acknowledgment I was having an issue. When you refuse to control your brand others will do it for you. After 12 hours of no assistance from @EllisLab I have decided I am done with one of their products. That’s what shitty support gets you.
I am thinking EE is out of touch. The idea that they don’t get social media at all is just a symptom. I’m an advocate for engaging your customers wherever they are, not dictating to your customers where they can be ignored. They shouldn’t be killing twitter accounts, they should be creating app.net ones and finding developers there and trying to excite people. Yeah, but no.
With customer service like this you’re not selling a product for long.
Sid L. Tamara — 05:21 on 09.05.2012
It’s kinda curious. It’s almost like they are in denial, but I really don’t believe they are. It’s very easy to judge from the outside looking in and bemoan the apparent lack of business acumen that they are exhibiting, assuming that everything is fine and that they are making some bad decisions, but I don’t buy it.
I think there are bigger problems - personal issues, character issues, financial issues, power struggles. Where’s Rick in all this? I can’t imagine they are sitting down to work everyday, mindful of the views of the remnants of the community and thinking they are doing a good job. We hear how EE is growing hugely, and assume that equals higher revenues but they still maintain a small core team. They work remotely - that’s a tough ask.
Every company is going to have problems. I hope the lack of movement on bug fixes is related to something fundamental that is changing. I hope it’s not reflective of internal combustion and they are dying slowly from the inside.
We’ve seen a pretty steady stream of people leaving, from support staff to people higher up and even reactor members everything goes quiet. Their outward communications are actually pretty disjointed - as if not one person owns them, and it’s piecemeal.
Consolidating the Twitter accounts is okay - they are clearly struggling to maintain it all but it;s not really about social media. The stuff they’ve been tweeting is rubbish. It’s about faith in the community. The community happens to live on Twitter, but whether they use their blog or tweet, it makes no difference. We just need to know that the company is not winding down and that there is a reason for latest round of radio silence.
But I do want to emphasise that there are always two sides to the story, and from what I know, I don’t believe it’s 100% a case of the blind leading the blind. Something has caused the chaos - I don’t believe this is all intentional.
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