Social Media Myth #1

February 18, 2018

Social Media Myths 

What’s good for big business is not always good for small business.

There have been a log of myths and misnomers about the benefits of social media marketing and social networking sites for small businesses.

Many small business owners are finding that these platforms do not live up to the buzz.

While I am a big fan and promoter and provider of “outrageous” marketing consulting, ideas and tools that get your business found and gets your message out, there are a lot of challenges when setting up your social media marketing strategy and tactics. (To be fair, I’ve not found more than a handful of small business owners that know how to market worth a cr*p, so they face challenges with any marketing medium. But we’ll focus on Social Media Marketing here today.)

So if you’re drawn to the Facebook-Twitter-LinkedIn-etc. bright, shiny pots of gold on the hill, please pause and consider the following few posts before you go any further.

1. Social marketing is free.

We all know that direct mail is not free.

You have to get the list, write the letter, address the envelopes, stuff the envelopes, pay for a stamp and get them to the post office…all for a 0.5% to 1% response rate.

(I can help you bump that up DRAMATICALLY. It all boils down to list segmentation and copy writing, but I digress.)

Leveraging social media sites for marketing is not “free,” either.

In fact, because of the proliferation of social media sites and tools, it may be the most expensive form of marketing available today because it takes so much time to wrap your arms and brain around this ever-evolving platform.

Sure, most social media sites can be created for free: Facebook, WordPress, Twitter, Google, Google Wave, Flickr, LinkedIn, YouTube, TweetDeck, HootSuite, etc. all cost zero dollars to create.

But like a new puppy, they all need constant care and feeding and attention because, just like an un-supervised puppy can get into trouble, an out-of-date blog or Facebook Fan Page can actually harm your Web 2.0 marketing efforts.

And if you’ve ever attempted to write a direct mail piece, update the content on your website or even create a radio or TV ad, you know how hard it is to keep your sites and marketing material up to date and current.

Social media ads the additional “burden” of requiring you to respond to questions from visitors either in the comment section or via text/chat, post brilliant ideas and concepts (such as here! :-), add attractive, eye-pleasing graphics, monitor (good and bad) activity (you should see one of the “crazies” that attempted to hijack one of my LinkedIn Groups) — all in an effort to create buzz and chatter about you and your business.

Companies using social media marketing to successfully close new business are on their sites all the time.

What is considered “old information” today may be just an hour old!

If you allow comments—as you should—and you do not respond, you might as well transfer money straight to the PayPal account of your competition.

Most mid-sized companies (and certainly, large enterprises) have fulltime “social media marketers / writers” building their online presence.

It is a fulltime job keeping a presence on these sites, and fulltime people consume fulltime resources.

If you don’t have that type of cash or time on your hands you can always check out my Done-For-You-Social-Media offering at a fraction of the cost of a fulltime person. (Next we’ll look at whether or not the “big” sites are the “best” sites for you.)

If you need more help growing your sales, check out the following resources scattered around this site and a few others I operate, such as:

Good Selling,