What’s Your Social Media Excuse?

Lots of companies are still nervous about entering the cool waters of social media. Here are the top excuses—or “rationales”—I hear:

“We have no resources to devote.”
“We can’t control it, so why bother at all.”
“Consumers are confused. There are too many conflicting points of view.”
“Social media is a trend and will burn out soon.”

These same companies may also still believe that they control the dialogue around their company’s brand, products and services. Truth is, social media is a great leveler. Marketers who refuse to acknowledge the shift that’s taking place are missing out on the opportunity to get in front of online social dialogue and learn from the insights and postings that are happening…with or without you.

We’re witnessing a move in consumer online usage from entertainment to communication, via social media and networking sites. According to Netpop Research, there’s been a 93% increase in social networking since 2006—with 105 million Americans using social media sites such as LinkedIn and Plaxo.

Is social media really a marketing tool?

Give Skittles credit for a rather bold experiment, taking down their website in March and transforming their home page into an online portal featuring Twitter, You-Tube and Facebook. Sure, within a couple of days a flood of “junk tweets” forced a slight revision in strategy but only to the point of making the Twitter link smaller. And…so what?

For most companies, social media is really hard to manage. Take Twitter. With such high volumes of “tweets”, it is impossible to respond to every comment or complaint. But some level of monitoring the dialogue on Twitter – plus other social media outlets and ratings/review sites – allows companies greater knowledge of consumer acceptance and need for improvement. Ultimately, online chatter makes for better products and services.

Come on in. The water’s fine.

We encourage many of our clients to have a presence in social media. And certainly not to dive in without a clear plan with measurable objectives—you can’t simply “throw tweets” or post randomly. And while measuring effectiveness remains challenging, tools and protocols are evolving quickly. We’re certainly experiencing good results with campaigns that are strategy driven.

I believe that social media, at its most basic, should simply be viewed as an immediate way to better understand and engage with your customers. Then what can seem overwhelming becomes much less fearful and your excuses (I mean, rationales) start to fade away.