I’ve heard from a lot of business owners who are interested in using social media, but when it comes down to actually doing it, they complain about the time and/or money involved. Yet these same people will make time for other things they deem crucial — networking, advertising, etc. Finding the time or hiring someone else to help with social media isn’t an issue if you think it’s important enough. But, there are consequences to not using social media:
- Potential customers can’t find you — Sure, you have a website, but what if someone is looking for you or your services using social media and you’re not there?
- Lack of research available — When customers are in the research phase of the purchasing cycle, they often use online resources, as well as turning to their own networks (online and offline). If you’re not online, interacting and building up a network, people will turn to companies that are.
- No reaction to negative reviews — Unfortunately, people are more likely to take the time to write a negative review than they are if service was spectacular. There may be negative reviews about your company out there and if you’re not there to see them, you can’t intervene to try to fix the situation or at least post your own side of what may have happened.
- Lost opportunities to interact — Your customers (or potential customers) are online. They are probably talking about topics relevant to your services. If you’re not there to interact with them, you’ve missed an opportunity to provide value and have conversations to build relationships.
- Search engine optimization — Now that most search engines are also using data from social networks in their results, not being on social networks means you’re not showing up in search results as often as you could.
- Giving in to the competition — If you’re not on social networks, are your competitors? Business is about taking advantages of opportunities. Someone will take advantage of interacting with your customers if you don’t.
What other consequences are there for NOT using social media?
(photo by THOR)