Is Social Media Worth Your Time?

Which Social Media site is right for your business and what level of engagement makes sense? It's all part of a well-considered Social Media Engagement Strategy.

Engaging customers online may depend on a high level of Social Media Marketing on sites like Facebook, Twitter and site aggregators like Pinterest, but your business needs and resources may not make the effort worthwhile.

“The cost issues are critical for a small business,” says Paul Verna, senior analyst with eMarketer in a recent post on MSNBC/AmericanExpress’ Small Business on Main blog. Larger companies can afford to hire an agency or even a team of people to handle the time-consuming chores of creating content, making regular updates and monitoring corporate social media pages. A small company may only have a part-time resource. “Even having one person dedicated to your social media profile better have an intense payoff at the other end,” Verna warns.

This explains why in a recent Hiscox survey, most business owners say an effective Social Media Engagement Strategy is a “must,” but over 50% of respondents aren’t using social media at all.

The Problem

“Most people go on Facebook to connect with people like family and friends or to play games, and they really don’t care about your ball-bearing company,” observes Mark Schaefer, a blogger and consultant in social media marketing. “At the end of the day, you have to go to where your customers are.” This means dedicating resources to target your Social Media Strategy to engage your existing and potential customers.

Social Media Expert Jay Baer says the trend is too powerful to ignore. “Fifty-two percent of Americans have a Facebook page, so it’s not just for big companies.” Small companies have an advantage, he says, since they don’t have layers of management getting in the way. One strategy he recommends is using your Facebook page as a way to keep customers and prospects informed about special offers and company news.

So how do you make the right decision about how deeply to delve in? What’s the right level of engagement for your business? The good news is that you can develop strategies that focus on your market in the major Social Networking sites as well as industry-specific sites and blogs.

Market And Industry Matters

SMB Group Analyst Laurie McCabe points out that sites like Facebook and Google Plus are ideally suited for companies targeting consumers. A beauty salon may use their Facebook page to list daily openings and offer a discount for those who book from the Facebook page.

“A lot of people use Facebook only for personal stuff,” she says. “If you are a B2B company, going to an industry site could be better.”

Twitter, for instance, is a “must-do” for anyone working in the technology industry. For her own branding, McCabe often answers questions on the software marketplace site GetApp.com.

Get feedback from your existing customers on how they’d like to hear from you; use an email survey with an incentive for respondents.

Save Time

Take the time to think through how you’re going to use Social Media. Just building a Facebook page or posting on Twitter is almost certainly going to be ineffective and won’t generate leads. But using those sites for Customer Service or Support, for example can be effective and even create a community where customers help each other out, advises McCabe. “Using social media strategically instead of in an ad hoc way is usually more successful,” she says.

Sometimes business owners start out enthusiastically posting way too much on their Facebook page, then slacking off when they see no response. Verna says that’s worse than doing nothing at all. Set realistic expectations with the understanding that building a community of followers takes time and just because you don’t initially see a response doesn’t mean your customers aren’t reading your posts and internalizing your message. Verna also recommends posting relevant information just a few times a week to start.

Success can come as a result of a slow start and building momentum with creativity. Former aerospace manager Kenneth Larson drives a ton of traffic to his blog using Social Networking sites and increased his business by 30% using his LinkedIn profile.

How did he start? He first created a small blog, just writing about what he knew — offering government contracting advice. “The idea was to refer clients to article links on the site to avoid repeating myself over and over to new business clients,” he says. He then started promoting his services using LinkedIn where he also responded to questions using the Answers feature.

Then he used Twitter, BlogCatalog, Facebook, Widgetbox, FriendFeed and Ning to drive traffic to his site. He spends about three hours a day on Social Networking activities. But the payoff has been huge. In addition to the 30% increase in business, he also services clients more efficiently. “The result has been heavy traffic, good efficiency in supporting over 4,000 counseling cases over the last four years, and virtually no expense to me as a volunteer working for a nonprofit organization,” he remarks.

You can dip your toe in Social Networking by looking at your competitors’ sites, McCabe says. See what they’re doing and determine whether it may be effective for you. “At the least, do some monitoring so you aren’t missing out on conversations.”

Funny conversation

I know that when large chain technology retailers attempt computer repair as an income source they rely on what help they can find.  With that said I think it’s fair to say that an experience from store to store can be quite different.  Just this week I was purchasing a quick item for a project with my “reward zone” bucks and while checking out the attendant mentioned that their computers are running slow.  He went on to tell me that this checkout pc was one of two that hasn’t crashed.  You could have heard a pin drop when I told the nice gentleman that he should probably get someone to look at their problems, after all you do have a squad right beside you.  He looked at me, looked down and chuckling said, they aren’t allowed to touch our machines.  I along with the ten other people in line laughed out loud as to opening admit that we understand what he’s saying.  I just think it’s funny that the company that bought and employs their own squad doesn’t even trust them enough with their own equipment.