5 Reasons Why Social Media Doesn’t Work

1. No resources. Although social media is very cost effective compared to other marketing methods, it’s also time-consuming and someone within your company has to consistently provide (interesting and relevant) content across key networks. Just turning up doesn’t count (e.g. Costa Coffee set up a Twitter account in October 2008 and hasn’t updated a Tweet since (despite having 1,262 followers – see http://twitter.com/CostaCoffee).

2. You are looking for a ‘quick fix’ sales boost. Using social media such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, YouTube, etc won’t instantly generate sales. It will take time and effort to get into two-way conversations with potential customers and you need to build trust (which takes time) before these activities generate revenue. If you are looking for a more instant ROI use Google Adwords.

3. Your company doesn’t like criticism. Social media is about creating an open and honest approach between companies and individuals. You have to accept that criticism may arise as a result of this and be prepared to learn from it. However, if a company isn’t interested in what ‘the outside world’ are saying about them or dislikes negative comments, social media may not be right for them (although in his book ‘Purple Cow’, Seth Godin writes “Nobody says, “yeah, I’d like to set myself up for some serious criticism!” And yet…the only way to be remarkable is to do just that.”

4. Slow to respond / lawyers get involved. If your company likes to vet everything that gets publically published (and perhaps get lawyers to look over all external communications), then your posts are going to look too approved / polished and will turn people off. It will also mean that you become slow to respond, which goes against the whole idea of social media providing real-time communication.

5. Top Management aren’t interested. If updating social media posts gets given to the youngest staff member ‘because they have a Facebook account’ or because senior management believe Twitter to be all about celebrity updates and benign bits of information, then your social media campaign won’t work. It’s about creating advocates/ external brand ambassadors through sharing, being helpful, educating and guiding. Ideally, senior management should be the ones to embrace social media and utilise it, not shun it.

Tanya Arturi........  To change this standard text, you have to enter some information about your self in the Dashboard -> Users -> Your Profile box.