In a word No!
I could leave it there and make this the shortest article on my blog but I guess I need to explain myself.
The Social Media Equation
The draw of social media comes in two parts, Reach + Value. I will address the latter first as it’s the easiest. As the sites don’t charge for making a profile and displaying your information to the world, some might think the value of social media is high and for some it is. In fact I have heard some say:
“…well too many of my employees are sitting around doing nothing half the time, so why not have them doing something that could benefit the company”.
This may be true, but to be honest it sounds like a management problem not a marketing one, and if true, who wants idle employees promoting their company. What every company needs large or small are people who Love them and can’t wait to tell others – brand evangelists.
The actual cost of social media is hard to predict, but have you considered the cost to your brand? Having the wrong person head up your messaging can spell disaster even if your brand is huge like Chrysler. Even a professional can get caught up in the social aspect of Twitter and Facebook and forget themselves and use language unthinkable in a meeting or when talking to a customer.
It’s a mind set issue which leads nicely to the first part of the equation, reach.
Some would argue that having millions of potential viewers reading the messages you send out is worth the time and effort many companies devote to their social accounts. For some this might be true but for most it’s simply broadcasting rather than the harder and more effective narrowcasting that leads to real results.
Coming up with creative ways to reach your potential customers is challenging but will always be more productive than casting your net far and wide hoping that there you will generate something worth while to act on. Let’s keep it real, creating a group on your account is not narrowcasting.
Unless you are a packaged goods merchandiser whose strategy includes continuous contact with its audience or a web based business with a business model that allows them to match products to the traffic they generate, it just does not generate any real profit.
For the small to medium business that is not an online entity (the majority of businesses) you just do not have enough to say to make it real.
Social network sites can be an effective communication medium if used as part of a media spread, where it is one of the ways you communicate to your audience. This is where broadcasting is needed, so if you are running a promotion social media can be a tempting tool. The question I have to pose is this, would it be better to generate the desire to tweet in your customers?
I often wonder if business should not take a step back and look at their activity online and let the social media be a purely social one?
If your business truly has a global market, with no language or geographic boundaries, and the people you want to reach do everything online including buying the products you sell (like the online marketing industry), then an active social media strategy might be just what you need. If, however this is not you then maybe you could spend your time creating promotions that give people something to talk about. The people who love your brand will become an extenuation of your marketing team and actively tell their friends about how great you are. This may not make dollar signs appear in your bosses eyes when you present ways to support them, but the results might be surprising. After all one of the biggest brands on the planet has used evangelists to take them from disaster to world domination, Apple. All they have achieved in the last 5 years has been without a single corporate social media account!