I understand that these days your resume better indicate that you can easily and knowledgeably navigate social media. As someone who’s waaaay behind the curve on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, etc., I’m wondering to what extent a presence in these media is good for/essential for the financial success of a business. (BTW, I’m semi-retired, so I’m not asking WRT to my own career. Just curious.)
I know that just about anyone who wants to sell a product or service to the general public must have some kind of web presence where people can find out what you do, where you are, how to contact you, etc. People don’t go to the yellow pages anymore, they go to the internet. That’s a given, and I’m not asking whether every business should have a web site; they should.
I guess my main question is: what is the specific function of social media WRT business profitability?
What I’m wondering is if small/medium business owners feel your bottom line is directly affected by your involvement in actual social media. I know it’s a good idea to have relationships with your customers (donors, if you’re a non-profit), and there are things you do to be visible in the community that don’t result in a direct increase in business. Does a heavy social media presence really drive sales/donations? Does the time spent on this stuff translate into more dollars coming in over the transom? Someone has to compose and send those tweets and post stuff to your Facebook page-- do you see this more as a community relations function and not so much related directly to the bottom line?
If you recently got heavily into social media, have you seen an increase in business, i.e., profit, foot traffic into your store/office, phone calls, new clients, or however you measure your success? if you aren’t into social media at all, do you feel like you’re missing out… or do you feel that you can’t spare the employee-hours to attend to these potentially time-sucking activities that may not increase profits?
What kinds of businesses might be better off letting the social media bandwagon pass them by?
The kind that already have more business than they know what to do with, or only service institutional clients. The thing to remember about social media marketing is that it’s free. You can’t beat that.
I know exactly what you meant, but a person has to take the time to compose and send tweets and post/upload stuff to FB, and the employer is paying for that person’s time. Is that expense going to be returned in increased profit?
I get much better results from my website and television advertising than I do from posting to my company Facebook page. Then again, I don’t spend any money on Facebook, so it’s not costing me anything but time.
This is why I’m asking the question. In a small business, your time is very much worth something, and time spend on activities that don’t generate income…can you (the generic “you”) really afford that?
I do non-profit fundraising part time and find myself in the position of advising development directors. I tell them that everything they do should be geared toward raising money for the organization. If someone tries to suck them into some activity that DOESN’T raise money in some detectable way, they should foist it off on someone else. If the development director spends a significant amount of time on FB or Twitter, but those activities don’t bring in money, that’s a poor use of time. S/He could be using that time better writing proposals or taking donors to lunch.
So to say “it’s not costing me anything BUT time”… that could turn out to be a huge cost. And for a company that’s large enough to screen resumes of potential staffers by how much social media experience they have–this seems to say that the employer believes this experience will benefit the bottom line of the company. But I’m asking, “will it?”
These things don’t take any time or effort. They are integrated with all the other advertising and public relations activities. If you are doing a print ad or coupon or promotion or event you just copy and paste it to the different sites. And you scale it to your audience. If your page has a larger number of subscribers, then it pays to put more effort into it. If it has less subscribers, then just replicate whatever you are doing elsewhere. I mean what’s the question here?
Yes, you should have a basic website, a Facebook page, and a twitter account. I wouldn’t bother with anything else unless the business is specifically creative in nature. If you’re a photographer you might want to do flickr and maybe Instagram. If you are a creative consultant or writer, there are other sites you might want to get into. But basic business, dedicated site, Facebook, and twitter.
Social media is not only free and low effort, it also has basically a captive audience.
Many of my friends have theatre companies and use facebook to promote performances. I am definitely interested in those updates, and will go and see the performances they advertise. I would say that is probably the main way these events are communicated to me, other than verbally.
One way to look at it is, social media is like a combination newsletter and directory listing. It’s there for people who are looking for you, and it’s there to get repeat business and remind people you still exist. It’s not there to let new customers who haven’t heard of you know you exist. That’s what print/TV/radio/google ads are for.
For a large multinational corporation, I think that social media provides little to no value. A CEO is not going to hire a company based on some articles your “Director of Social Media” retweeted on Twitter, liked on Facebook or linked to on LinkedIn.
Ours is a need-based company, selling something you only need, well, when you need it. We could advertise FREE (whatever) and it simply wouldn’t matter unless at the time you see it, you need it. We have not found any value in social media.
If your business is a small business that serves the general public (as opposed to other businesses), I think you do need a social media presence. It doesn’t have to be crazy. Post your menu/prices on your Facebook and check your Facebook and Twitter pages once or twice a day (say, set aside 5 min in the morning before opening and 5 minutes after you close the doors) just to see if anyone’s asked you anything.
It isn’t a direct financial plus, it’s good customer service that helps you gain and retain customers. If a restaurant posts its daily specials on Facebook and Twitter and promptly responds to questions like ‘are your muffins gluten-free?’ people will hear about it. My coworker tweeted at a company praising their fast shipping times, got retweeted by them, and got a dialog going with some other people on Twitter. That didn’t directly make them money, but it made them look good and people noticed.
Upthread there were discussions about non-profits. If your non-profit is the type that aims for $1000+ donations from donors that you take out to lunch, social media probably won’t help, but if your non-profit is the type that would love a volume of $5 donations people could make straight from Twitter by sending a tweet? That’s where social media comes in handy.
One thing that I’ve found is that once you start, you can’t stop. Especially if you use social media to post things that change on a regular basis. For example, we post our daily soup lineup on Twitter. It doesn’t seem like people look at it, but if I forget to post it, we get about double the phone calls asking what the soups are, a handful of (slightly nasty) emails asking me to post them and probably some lost sales from people that just don’t bother coming in.
OTOH, if I had never started posting them to twitter to begin with, would people just call/come in…or would those be sales we never had to begin with?
Depends who’s time it is. If we’re talking about a small business and it’s the owner or the owner’s son (that takes a salary) and they’re working on this at home, at 11pm while watching TV long after they’ve already put in 65 hours, it’s about as close to free as it gets.
So it sounds like some modest to heavy regular use of Facebook and Twitter are good for small/medium businesses that
have a regular following who seek your services/products with some frequency,
want to communicate regular changes in schedule, specials, activities, etc. to those customers,
have someone who can spare the time to keep up with this stuff, which I guess doesn’t take all THAT much time.
That makes sense. I can see using Facebook for this kind of stuff because apparently EVERYONE checks it often, and it’s a lot simpler than updating your web page. And it seems like restaurants, hair salons and similar service businesses would be good candidates for Twitter.
I like the idea of having real information exchanged through these media–that does make sense and seems like a good way to spend your time. Building friends and relationships ultimately drives business, and in today’s world, service and responsiveness are what distinguish one business from another when you can buy the same product from many different sources.
For bigger organizations that don’t have such a personal following, FB and Twitter might not be so useful. I check the FB page of the community college I attend, and also the department FB page, and the updates are weeks old-- no one has the task of keeping up, so it’s pretty useless. And the Twitter feed that comes from the public relations office is very verbose and very lacking in interesting/worthwhile content.
It’s “free”. As long as you consider your time “free”, that is. If you’re of the attitude that you can always earn more money, but the amount of life you have is finite and unknowable, therefore you’d better optimize your time on this planet… well, it’s not as “free” as it seems.
You can engage with your customers one on one, building a community.
Helps with branding.
Can establish you as an authority in your field, especially if you have a large network.
Network effects – the more people who “like”, “friend”, “retweet”, etc you or your company, the more people they know will find out about your company.
Can increase traffic to your website, which is crucial if your business is your website.
CONS
A huge involvement in time and creativity is needed. You (or somebody) has to respond to messages, complaints, etc – time that may be better spent working on your business, developing new markets/products, etc. Sorry, Joey P, but somebody who opens their FB account at 11pm for the first time that day is not doing Social Media marketing correctly, nor are they doing themselves any favors with the lack of sleep. Given an active FB page, if somebody complains at 9:33am, you can’t wait until 11:00pm or later to respond to them.
You may lose control of your message. Customer complaints, flame wars, and more can occur on your FB page and you have no control over it other than to change your privacy settings.
Return on Investment is delayed, sometimes significantly. Put a coupon in the newspaper or ValPack and you get a quick idea of your ROI merely by counting the number of coupons redeemed. Put a coupon on FB and unless your controls are properly set up, it can be difficult to determine how many came in because of said coupon.
The people engaging and reading your content may not be your market. A restaurant, for example, will get most of its customers within a 2-3 mile radius of its location, so if a large % of people who engage with it are in different cities… well, that’s not going to improve your ROI.
Many SM sites exhibit usage patterns that indicate “faddish” behavior on their participants – their usage spikes, everything is hunky-dory for a few months, they get a lot of press, then… usage slowly declines as the users of Instagram discovers the appeal/newness-factor of Pinterest. Pinterest spikes, everything is awesome for a few months, they get a lot of press, then… their base starts migrating to Vine. Lather, rinse, repeat. As a small business owner, are you better served trying to learn and keep on top of multiple platforms every day or are you better served improving customer service, cutting costs, and utilizing direct and media marketing to reach your customers?
JohnT, go to the head of the class. This is what I was looking for.
BTW, my late husband loved you and Angie Dickinson in Rio Bravo– his favorite movie. He especially loved her in that black lace outfit with the sheer black stockings (and I know you did, too).
This is what I was looking for.