Are You using Social Media? If not, WHY NOT?

Social Media has the reputation of being “just for kids” to keep in touch with their friends.  When it first hit the scene that may have been the case.  Currently, that viewpoint is far from being accurate or at least is not the full story .  Did you know that if FaceBook were a country it would be the third largest in the world?  FaceBook currently has over 500 million users!  Even “micro-blogging” platform Twitter as over 75 million users that, by the latest figures from February 23, 2010, send over 50 million “Tweets” per day. That’s a HUGE amount of communication going on.

While it maybe true that a good percentage of this communication is between groups of individuals just keeping track of who’s dating who, what they thought of the latest movie, or who’s coming to the party this weekend,  it is also true that major companies are spending some serious money to generate “Buzz” on the various platforms like FaceBook and Twitter, among others.  Pepsi, certainly a major player in the advertising game, will not be spending their millions on ads for the Super Bowl, but instead have dedicated a part of their ad budget to social media.  This is no small thing, not a flash in the pan experiment.  Companies like Pepsi-Cola and others have multi-million dollar advertising departments and agencies that they use to keep their name in front of the public and generate more sales.  They have determined, through careful study of the metrics, that Social Media is a place to put their money.  There are even major retail brands that are paying Celebrity Twitter users to generate “followers” for them.  As the saying goes,  “Money talks, BS walks.”

A wise person once told me, “If you want something that someone has, you must do exactly what they did to get it.”   What is the safest way to cross a mine field?  You walk in the exact same footprints as someone who has successfully crossed it!   Duplicating efforts should also duplicate results.

While the concept is simple, the implementation is not always that simple.  Big companies spend thousands, even millions of dollars on their ad campaigns.  They staff entire advertising departments with dozens of people, hire outside advertising agencies, and generally approach it in a professional way.   It is a matter of scale.  If you have a national or even international company, your potential client base will be in the millions.  To reach that client base, they need to commit some serious capital to the effort, and they know this.

You, as a small to medium-sized business owner or individual entrepreneur, you likely do not have the resources to fund such a massive effort.  Even if you did, if successful, the influx of new customer demand might totally destroy your business.  Strange as it may sound, too many customers can be just as bad as not enough.  You need to temper your efforts based on your ability to deliver what you’re offering.  Word to the wise – Stand by for heavy traffic if you do start a program.

Contact: MasterofBuzz@gmail.com