Why Isn’t Your Business Utilizing Social Media?

social media tip

Local, scenic shots can provide great social media content!

Most businesses can benefit from utilizing social media. It helps with SEO (Search Engine Optimization), enables direct communication with consumers and businesses, and most of the time it’s free.  Furthermore, fair or not, there are increasing expectations that legitimate companies and businesses will have a presence on sites like Facebook and LinkedIn.

So why isn’t every business utilizing social media?  Below are the top 3 reasons we have heard that have prevented business owners from benefiting from social media.  Why don’t we say “reasons” instead of “excuses”?  A hard rule of business:  If it is important to you it gets done.  If it is not, it does not.

Excuse #1: No Time
Running a business is time consuming and business owner’s often do not have time to be active on all the different social media sites.  After a long day the last thing you want to do is hop on a computer or mobile device to write content.  Also, social media is constantly evolving and changing over time and the typical business owner does not have the time to stay current with the technology.

Excuse #2: It’s Confusing
What is the purpose of having a social media profile? Some businesses will set up different accounts on various social media sites and then realize that they don’t know what to post about. “What’s appropriate to post on Facebook? What isn’t appropriate? Is the purpose to sell, sell, sell products like in other marketing channels?”  These are just some of the questions that can stop a business in its tracks, or lead them to make some social media mistakes.

Excuse #3: I Don’t Want To
There’s no shame in admitting that social media, writing updates and monitoring just is not your cup of tea.  You see the value, but also know yourself in that it’s just not for you.  But if you are not going to do it, you need someone who will.  That may be an internal resource (although make sure that they are a strong and consistent writer) or a company like us.

We’re always happy to talk.

Matt