F-ed in Social Media?

Sorry. It Stands for FAIL.

I ask the question in the title because if your social media activities are wasting your time? You’re doing it wrong.

Aaron Wall, one of the search professionals I respect, recently wrote Is Social Media Marketing A Waste Of Time?

Well, duh. Yeah, it is.

That’s because, Social Media, technically?  Isn’t marketing. Social media marketing is a great buzz phrase, but in reality it’s shorthand for “social media as part of a marketing strategy.”

Blogging too (which, if you haven’t noticed, is part of social media).

Blogs can be integrated into a marketing plan. But they are not marketing on their own.

Does that make Social Media a waste of time?

When you brush your teeth in the morning, it doesn’t have a specific ROI, does it? Yet, if fresh breath helps you deepen a relationship that results in a sale, then it has done its part.

Social media is simply a way to communicate.

That’s all.

Yes, using these modes of communication more efficiently can amplify a message. Yes, social media can make all of your network feel like you’re talking to them as individuals.

But if you approach it as your whole marketing strategy, you’re making a mistake.

I want to be fair to Aaron before I go on because I totally baited you by using his words. He later continues:

… social media must be back-ended with content geared towards establishing a valuable relationship, rather than one-off visits.

Marketing exists for one purpose: to sell stuff. If it doesn’t do that, then it isn’t marketing.

I agree.

The bottom line: no matter when social media gets a customer in my sales funnel to buy, they still did.

Social media helps put more people who would have never bought, or been one-time buyers into the tomorrow or repeat category.

Even still that doesn’t mean social media = marketing.

That’s like saying blogging IS marketing.

Or that search strategy IS marketing.

Getting visitors isn’t the end of the story, it’s the beginning. They still have to convert. Social media generates or keeps visitors. It doesn’t process or close them.

If you want more sales and traffic, use social media. Just not exclusively.

And Come On, This Time-Suck Theory is Bullshit

Another thing I found curious about his article was this:

Social media marketing is time consuming.

Building your social networks. Responding to “friends”. Is there are measurable return for the time spent? What is the opportunity cost of that time?

Link building is time consuming. Does that mean I shouldn’t do it to get better search engine results?

Beyond that, this is maybe the fourth time I’ve seen social media perceived as taking a great deal of time.

What are you folks doing that takes up so much time? How are you building your networks and relationships that you can’t point to where it made you money?

I’m not just being a smart ass, I’m specifically noticing that I must be doing something different with social media, since what takes me zero minutes to an hour per day is taking virtually everyone else much longer.

(Yes, literally, some days it takes me zero minutes a day to participate in social media, and participate I DO. Again, another time.)

You don’t need to spend more than a couple hours a week on Facebook, Twitter, StumbleUpon, LinkedIn, Delicious, Mixx and Digg combined, unless you’re a social media, search or marketing professional.

Having been all of the above at some point in time, I still don’t spend more than an hour a day on all of them put together, unless I’m there to play. Which, again, we’ll come back to another time.

Can Social Media Be a Waste Though?

Now, having recently driven 27,000 visitors to a blog that wasn’t set up for StumbleUpon via social media, I will say this.

If your site is set up to be more attractive to search engines than customers, or more of a sales funnel than a relationship builder, any traffic you get from social media might as well be from a robot. Just run ads and save yourself the headache.

If your site isn’t set up properly, from content to structure, a million visitors won’t make you a dime.

On the other hand, the proper use of social media as part of a larger marketing engine, just helped win an election.

Don’t sleep. If you don’t know how to use social media effectively, that’s on you.

Learn how.

If you’re confused about where or how to do that, feel free to respond below and let’s discuss it.

Next time, specific examples of how social media has paid off for me, the time it takes in my schedule, and the amount of money it put in my pocket.