Facts Reveal Social Media Not Saving Small Business

Have you heard all the hullabaloo about social media and how it will make your business big?  If you aren’t doing social media you are doomed?  I’m sure you have.  The social media experts know how to state their arguments in the most terrifying ways using the numbers of visitors going to social sites.

I agree with them, that there is a lot of people using these sites, and if engaged in a social manner your business can leverage the engagement to expand your business.  In fact, you can generate tons of leads, visitors and traffic from a highly active social media strategy.

Why Social Media Isn’t Your Savior

However, there is no evidence showing people lose their business from not having social media.  In fact, there is no evidence at all suggesting social media is the key to business success now, or in the future.

Though I am not a big fan of government interfering with business, the Small Business Administration does keep a lot of statistics on small business in the USA.  They have no data showing any relationship at all between the use of social media and the probability of business failing.

In fact, the SBA refers to a book by Michael Ames titled Small Business Management and Gustav Berle and his book The Do It Yourself Business Book for the source of why small business fails today.

The bottom line is none of the 10 reasons listed can be attributed to a lack of a social media strategy.  Sure, social media may play a part in some of these items, but the lack of it, cannot then be translated as the reason for failure.

So in the world of reality, social media can help you.  It can add to your bottom line, and build long term relationships with customers.  If you have an employee that is good at engaging in social media, then the time spent there is going to be worth your effort.

How to Know if You Should Do Social Media Marketing

If you are a small business of 5 or less people, then you likely need to evaluate closely whether you should focus on social media.  Here’s some common sense guidelines to help you decide.

• Does anyone in your business truly like doing more than answering other people on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest or the social media of choice for you?
• Are you prepared to constantly feed content of value and interest to your audience through the social media?
• Do you have an hour or more a day to commit to social media?
• Are you prepared to provide answers to all the inquiries through your social profiles?
• Do you have a way to measure the results?

I could go on, but the 5 things above are what I find critical to deciding whether or not you should expend your time and money building and maintaining an active social profile for the purpose of marketing engagement with your customers.

It could mean big profits for you.  It likely won’t mean failure if you don’t.