When I talk with business owners about using social media to market their businesses I get several reasons why they’re not, or why they won’t, use social media for marketing.
Many times they can tell me the reasons, other times they hint at what the obstacle is.
First, they don’t know anybody else who is marketing through social media successfully. They look at what they need to do and they don’t know where to start. They have heard stories about the success others have had marketing with social media, but they don’t personally know anyone who is successful with using social media for marketing. Each of these factors all lead to the “no-one-else-is-doing-it syndrome.”
Second, this challenge relates back to reason one. Some business owners lack the commitment to make it happen. One of the challenges with social media is that the business owner has to make it happen. If the owner assigns the task to a staff member, the owner has to schedule time for that staff person to do the work. If the owner takes it on, he or she has to make time in his or her schedule. With no knowledge of how to get results, business owners often don’t see results fast enough, and they decide that it’s not worth the effort.
Third, business owners lack the desire to get the training they need for themselves or their staff. When experiencing a lack of results, they often aren’t willing to find the training and guidance they need to learn what it takes to be successful in this area.
Fourth, business owners aren’t willing to pay someone else to do it for them. Social media is supposed to be free. Why should they pay an outside resource to manage their social media accounts for them? They know their business better than anyone else. To be fair, many times the audience they are marketing to is a smaller audience who will not support the services of an outside company. A local business with a limited population doesn’t need an outside company managing its social media presence.
Fifth, business owners are achieving success doing what they have always done. As Voltaire said, “good is the enemy of great.” The challenge is that many business owners have achieved a level of success that they are comfortable with, and moving into social media is an area in which they aren’t comfortable.
These reasons all give business owners the perfect opportunity to ignore social media.
For others, there may be other reasons to not market through social media. This is a short list of the most common reasons I see and hear when people tell me why they don’t use social media.
Social media covers many different platforms – it’s not only Facebook, or LinkedIn, etc. There are over 150 different platforms considered social media available. There is likely to be at least one social media platform that will increase the success of your business. Take some time and find that platform.
The question you have to answer for yourself is: What are you going to do to sustain your business if anything happens to your current source of customers? Nothing lasts forever; if you don’t change then the rest of the world will leave you behind.
The following quote by one of my mentors, Lee Milteer, says it all:
“What worked years ago no longer works today. How are you updating your life, marketing, and beliefs to match with the current reality? The past is a closed door so don’t keep trying to go through it. Open a new door to your future.”
The world is changing around us at an ever-increasing speed. What are your plans for keeping up?
If you want help to design a strategy for this, Go Social Experts can help you. Click here for more information about Go Social Experts.