Social Media Disconnect: It Matters, But We Have No Strategy
Have a look at this chart that Facebook recently shared:
Those stats are from a Forrester survey of major brands — companies with Chief Marketing Officers and Marketing VPs and the like. There aren’t a ton of small businesses with employees holding those titles.
Seventy-six percent of the bigwigs surveyed recognize the value of social media to their brand, but only 33 percent actually have a strategy in place for capitalizing on the opportunities of being social.
I suspect the numbers would be even more pronounced if the survey involved small business owners.
This is actually a fairly common theme when we put on the GetListed.org Local University events. I speak on the social aspects of local marketing — Facebook, Twitter, blogging and the like. And it’s rare that anyone ever asks about the value of social networking; the questions usually deal with developing a strategy, finding time to implement strategies and tactics, and so forth.
I’m hoping that, if these same questions are asked a year from now — whether they’re put to big brands or small biz owners — the difference between the numbers in the upper left and lower right of that graphic will be less pronounced than it is today.
Small business owners: If you’re looking for some ideas on putting together a social media strategy, the article links below should be helpful.
Ask those same companies what are the most profitable sales mediums they have… and I bet SM is at the bottom, unless that’s all they do.
We continue with SM because it does produce sales, but in the scale of sales, SM is a total joke. Oh it’s great for support, customer connecting, and even list building… but in the scale of sales, it’s the stink on the bottom of our shoes.
Distro, kills social media marketing, it actually trumps all Internet sales and the sales produced from the store fronts, combined together. A store spending money on SM is playing with petty cash over a store that spends the time getting its products into other already established stores – that often have SM campaigns going. Which builds our brand for us, without us trying.
We keep SM because we’ve automated it, for the most part, and we do some guest posting/pod casting…. which is great for new business. And some stores have the content / flavors that do great on SM, but not most… and for those other people, SM should be ignored and the focus should be moved to places that produces sales with as little effort as possible.
Most small businesses would tell you, it’s not profitable, enough.
~Chris
Good thoughts, Chris — I’d generally agree with you. Social is largely a confirmation/support mechanism right now. I touched on that in this post a week or two ago:
http://www.smallbusinesssem.com/small-businesses-need-both-social-search/5538/
Hal – there’s a link in the opening sentence to the Facebook page with all the details, but I don’t believe they actually released the full survey/study.
Can you provide a link to the Forrester survey referenced in this post?
Hey Matt, thanks… I didn’t see that post when it came out. It’s spot on.
I guess I end up hearing many small stores complain about sales, and look to the Internet for the solution…. and for some it without question is, but for most its just not what they do or know, so it will never be anything more than another bad website or dead social account.
A local business has a ton of local reach potential. But the idea of the Internet, a Website or social marketing is pushed so big by others, that I think many owners forget they have – a community that is already built around them, right outside.
~Chris
So many of my B2B clients don’t see the value of social media – especially how it can affect search results. Slowly but surely, I am working to change that. Blog posts like yours are helping me build my case. Thanks.
Thanks, Matt!