UnMarketing: Stop Marketing. Start Engaging, Revised and Updated

8

Reasons Why Companies Don’t Use Social Media

NO MATTER HOW many times I sing the praises of social media, no matter how many case studies I present, company reps always give me an excuse of why they can’t jump in. They say they have no time, there is no ROI (return on investment), they have no control, or there is no geographical boundary if they are local.

If you say you have no time to listen and to talk with people in your marketplace, then you are saying that you have no time for your customers. You need to make time to be in that conversation. If you believe business is built on relationships, then what could possibly be more important?

Return on investment (ROI) is one of the lamest excuses that I hear all the time. Most old-school salespeople could never calculate their efforts in ROI in the first place. I ask them what their ROI is on the networking event that they drove to last week or the conference that they just attended to see their current customers. It is more ROR (return on relationships) and, truthfully, that is really hard to calculate.

A classic move is to want to control the message. Company reps are used to having to go through multiple layers and approvals before being released to the public via a news chain. The funny thing is that they never had control even before social media. It is just that now people have a voice that can be heard.

Local businesspeople say that social media is fine for someone like me who has borderless clientele but no good for ...