Social media is a way to sell more social media.
Social media does not sell more of your products and services.
Social media takes significant time, but there is no evidence for an acceptable return on the time investment.
DISCUSS……
A quick scan of Google (and a few abstracts from academic articles) doesn’t help a great deal. As a business owner what I really want to know is how much additional turnover I can gain from investing in social media.
Social media gurus (who DO make money from selling the idea of social media) turn the idea of ROI into just about anything that they like and it no longer means ‘return on investment’. We are all drawn into discussions on ‘Attention’, ‘Interaction’, ‘Velocity’, ‘Conversation Index’, and for websites- ‘click throughs’ and so on and on.
My question is still not answered.
OK, so how about brand. Is it all part of that far less tangible idea of brand and reputation? Do we need to just ‘get our name out there’? I return to the old idea of the sales hook, you get someone’s attention, you engage them with information that interests them, persuade them that they want to buy in, then close the sale. Social media might well catch someone’s attention, but the real trick is to engage them and hold them there. It might do. But the final parts of the sales process are already disappearing into the mists of the day. Remember that car salesman? He knows only too well that if he doesn’t close the sale when he meets his customers, then there is a slim chance of closing the deal. So I suspect it is with social media – it just gets us part way.
I’m still not convinced.
“Ah”, shout the gurus, “but you need to ‘do’ social media because all your competitors do it”. Hmm, well, I still have a problem here because they aren’t the same as us and anyway, that doesn’t make it right does it? We become followers, (An unplanned pun there!), not leaders. We want to be at the front, changing ideas not running to keep up with the rest. So it’s going to take one of the big boys to be brave enough to say NO to social media. Well, maybe.
So, I’m opening up this question – ‘how much extra revenue does social media bring to YOUR business?
I’m waiting to hear from you….