Don’t Waste Time on Social Media Marketing

Manta, which bills themselves as “the largest online community dedicated entirely to small business,” reports that over 60% of respondents to their survey of members say they’ve seen no measurable return on investment from their social media marketing activities. Of those who did see a measurable ROI, 70% said it amounted to no more than $2,000.
     Yet 49% of the respondents said they’ve increased the amount of employee time devoted to social media, and only 7% said they’ve pulled back. The impression is that operators of small businesses, including retailers, sense there are big payoffs from using social media correctly, but they’re not sure how to use it correctly. One source for a USA Today article about the Manta study said small business operators initiate social media marketing campaigns mostly because everybody else is doing it.
     Unless you’ve a better reason than that, you’re wasting your time on social media. Here are tips for avoiding this:

• Recognize that the retailing ROI differs among social media platforms. In the Manta survey, Facebook was rated as the hardest platform to maintain. About 40%% said they have a Facebook page, but about 60% said they saw little value in Facebook for their business. There were uniformly more positive impressions for LinkedIn. In your business, however, it could be that Facebook produces more money than LinkedIn. The point is to assess time-wasting by platform rather than overall. 
• Continue to assess the ROI. As children develop into full-fledged retail consumers, we might very well see social media gain greater marketing influence. Evidence for this comes from the fact that in a Harris Interactive poll a couple of years ago, a significantly higher number of young adults than older adults said they’d received a helpful suggestion from social media for a product or store to try. 
• In social media marketing, emphasize “social” over “marketing.” The contract with the consumer changes when moving from traditional to social media. With traditional media, people accept the retailer’s marketing message as a necessary nuisance to get the content of interest. The advertiser is paying the bills. However, with social media, the consumer expects to be listened to as much as spoken to. The metaphor I recommend is one of sowing the seeds. Tossing instead of pushing. If you’ve cultivated the ground properly, the prompts you’re distributing with social media marketing will take root and arouse the consumer’s thinking. 

Click below for more: 
Distinguish Customers from Friends 
Sow the “Social” in Social Media