By Sharon Hill
When I decided to move from my hometown to a city more than 700 miles away, friends asked me “Why?” My response was “Why not?”
Whys (and their very close pal because) have a tendency to stop us from actions. Why nots on the other hand clear the road blocks.
So why are you not using social media?
Let me throw out a few whys and becauses and let’s see if we can clear the road:
1. It is not in my budget.
There is no green dollar cost for most social media marketing vehicles if you do it yourself.
2. It won’t work for my business.
Let’s take a look at what Wikipedia has to say about a business:
“The owners and operators of a business have as one of their main objectives the receipt or generation of a financial return in exchange for work and acceptance of risk.
If you have a successful business then your customers pay you for your work and your willingness to accept risk. You accept this objective every day. So yes, social media is work and not all social media channels will provide you the same return on your time investment and, as with everything, there is some risk, albeit, very little.
3. Reading tweets about what someone had for dinner is silly.
I think so too. Unless it happens to be that my favorite Chinese restaurant just added Moo Shu Pork to the buffet. Then the tweet had very specific relevance to me.
With that aside, some of the twitter craze is just that – a bit crazy. That does not mean there is not tremendous value. Also twitter is just one of the social media opportunities available. You don’t stop watching TV because you don’t like one of the networks.
4. I don’t have time to sit at a computer all day, I have a business to run.
No argument there. Did you know that you can schedule your tweets to go on certain days creating a backlog of “inventory” to bring out when needed? You can also schedule your blogs to be published on a future date. Again, create an inventory and store the material until you need it. Invite customers to send you information, share stories with you and with their permission, post it as a blog. There are no rules how much content you must have or how often you post.
5. I don’t know where to start and I am not the most computer savvy person on the planet.
This is probably the crux of the matter. It can seem to be over-whelming and intimidating. I am a computer savvy person, I design websites and teach computer classes. I had a learning curve and I made some mistakes. You will make some mistakes. The good news is that I have not found a mistake that can’t be corrected.
6. Once I get the social media stuff up and running someone [me] will have to maintain it. That has to be a ton of work.
There are plenty of ways of learning; webinars, tutorials and/or jump right in. Getting your social media up and running is the most time consuming. Managing the activity should be the exciting part! Every connection can represent a new customer. You can also work with social media marketing firms in a variety of ways and with reasonable and designed-to-fit costs.
So now that we have Whys and Becauses answered, why not started saying to yourself “Why Not!”
Why not? The risks versus the rewards look good. Social media is more than a fad or craze. It is bringing back the tried and true method of making real connections and giving and receiving referrals.
Why not? You can start small and learn one social media channel at a time. Time is always an issue and it will not get any better.
Wny not? So you don’t see the benefit of a particular social media channel, no one says you have to do all or nothing.
Back to the definition of business. “Main objectives: the receipt or generation of a financial return in exchange for work and acceptance of risk.
In your day-to-day business, you provide a service or manufacture a product (work) with an understanding there are risks in exchange for financial reward.
Social media provides a way to connect to your customers (work) with an understanding there are some risks (time and minimal costs) in exchange for financial reward (results from social media marketing).
Now I will ask the Why. Remember those folks who waited forever to learn computers? The longer they waited the harder it became to catch up. Social media is already past the “early adopter” stage. Why are you waiting?
@social_dynamics
