Chef
@Team-Orange @Team-Blue @Regular-Contributors @Power-User
Sorry about not responding to this sooner. It has been so crazy here lately, and I didn’t want to give this just a 2 second response.
I wrote a response multiple times, and I’m scrapping it all to be a bit briefer (Yes, this one is briefer than my first couple takes at writing something! Haha!)
Before the events of the last few months, I already had a distaste for social media for a variety of reasons, so I started to write out why I disliked them, and I didn’t personally use them. I have a lot of personal animosity towards social media, but I know a lot of people enjoy it and it provides value to them. I would write a 20 page novel if I could, but I decided I should cut a lot of that out because I ultimately hope everyone makes the choice that makes them happy and they also allow me to make the choices that make me happy, and I am personally happy by not using social media.
Walton’s ultimately uses various social media platforms because that is where many of our customers spend a lot of their time, they expect to interact with us there, and they find value in it. While we use them, I don’t want to let them use us. While they provide a benefit to our customers and thus a benefit to us, we will probably remain involved and have a page/channel to some extent on different platforms. We had been discussing previously if Twitter specifically was providing any value to us for a long time, and we had already made the decision to wind down what we did there. We simply no longer got a benefit from it and I don’t think many customers were either, so as of now, I believe we are mostly done with being very active on Twitter. Our account does remain there and will continue to, but it won’t receive much attention going forward because it doesn’t benefit our customers or us. While Facebook continues to benefit our customers who choose to use it, we will probably remain involved to some extent. I have historically chosen to not spend money with them, but I prioritize trying to use them (or any other social media platform) instead of letting them use us. If we and/or our customers stop getting a benefit from using them, then we will stop using them.
While I personally dislike social media in general, I understand everyone gets to make their own choice about whether they use it or not. I choose not to use it personally, but while people use the various platforms, we will try to be available as a company to our customers through the various channels they prefer. That does have a limit, and our involvement may only go so far as to the specific needs and benefits that it brings to our customers. If it stops being of a benefit to our customers, or somewhere else becomes a more appealing place, we would and will be changing our focus. I can say that we will be changing some of our focus. I know there are many other social media platforms out there that have some very strong and loyal user bases that we have not used in the past, and we have and are creating channels on some new platforms. If they prove to be beneficial to us and our customers that use them, we’ll continue to focus more heavily on them than others. We will continue to try to adapt to where our customers are investing their time.
The Most Important Stuff
One of the “alternative” platforms out there, in my opinion, is Meatgistics. It is in a sense, some level, part, or piece of a social media. I wouldn’t put it in that exact category, but it does have some similarities. Meatgistics is where I prefer and we do spend most of our time and money, particularly when it comes to direct customer interactions. I very much prefer having our own platform for sharing, communicating, and interacting with customers (and even people who aren’t customers). I think Meatgistics has been a place that has grown to be a very well respected place where everyone is friendly, kind, supportive, and very much like a family (Even Team Blue, as crazy as they are, hold a special place in my heart! Hahaha!). It is unlike other sites, platforms, and places out there on the web for the quality of community that has been developed. We could have spent our time and money on building a connection with people through an existing social media and a group page there, but we decided to forge our own path and create our own place where people could communicate freely with one another and us and we weren’t beholden to someone or something else. While other social media platforms will always have some place in what we do, Meatgistics will always be our main focus, our main area of communication, and our preferred place to interact with everyone out there. Everyone has their own choice to make though on where they spend their time. Many people won’t ever use Meatgistics because it is not as convenient to them as Facebook, or maybe it is just too unfamiliar, or whatever other reason people may have, but we can choose to make this the one place that receives most of our attention, time, and money, and we can try and foster an environment that is different from other places out there. That is the amazing thing that I love, the fact that everyone is free to make their own choices. My hope is that everyone is also able to respect my choices and let me be free to choose what I want to do, just as I don’t want to interfere with what they choose to do, even when I don’t agree with them. My choice and loyalty will always lie with the users of Meatgistics and the people here. Even if we have or don’t have a presence on other platforms, Meatgistics will always be the one platform we will spend our focus on.
