Dec 7, 2009
5 Instances of when NOT to use social media
With all of the hype and outlandish claims being made about Social Media, it is easy to forget that it is not a panacea to all businesses needs and there are in fact instances where it is wholly inappropriate. Social Media is certainly not a trivial project to deploy, planning and consideration needs to be applied. Through our work with a number of organisations, we have found 5 scenarios where frankly Social Media would be a complete waste of resources.
- Business or product has less than approximately 50 customers. At one end of the spectrum you might be a very small one man band with a small local customer base, or, at the other extreme you are a very niche (probably B2B) large business. Either way your business operates around providing a product or service for only a handful of customers (50 being a rough rule of thumb). When your customer base is so tightly defined a more direct marketing approach is appropriate. Regular face-to-face meetings, client events / briefings and other direct tactics are a better fit. Social media helps organisations scale their marketing interactions to reach vast audiences, but when your target customer base is small the scale that social media can provide is less appropriate to your needs and therefore unlikely to present a viable return. For both the very small business and and the large enterprise with a very niche customer base, social media is little more than a costly distraction.
- Decision makers are behind secure firewalls – Some organisation, particularly military and some public sector bodies ensure the integrity of their environments by stopping access to large parts of the web. A few corporate organisations also limit employee access to certain parts of the internet. If your key purchasing decision makers spend their time in a work environment that is highly secure with limited or blocked web access then using the web to reach them is unlikely to be a successful marketing strategy. For Social Media to be successful it depends upon reaching and engaging with your target market. Clearly if they can not access the web then digital engagement is unlikely to be successful.
- No internal advocate for social media – Sometimes the limiting factor is not about your customers but rather about your own organization. A common trait amongst all organizations that are being successful with Social Media is that they have buy-in and support from key individuals internally. Often it is the CEO or MD, but at minimum it needs to be a senior member of the management team within the organization. This advocate can supply the resources and leadership to drive forward a Social Media strategy. Without such support attempting to implement a Social Media strategy is almost certainly doomed to failure.
- Need to generate short-term sales – Social Media can influence sales in the mid and long term, it is a marketing channel and not (generally) a sales channel. If the focus and key objective is to sell X units of a product over the next 3-4 weeks, then Social Media is almost certainly an inappropriate tool for your organization.
- Lack of resource – A significant threat to most Social Media initiatives is a lack of resources. The myth that because most online platforms are free then it should be virtually free to include Social Media into an organisations marketing and communications has meant that too many projects have launched with no hope of success from the outset. Implementing Social Media is not a cheap activity. Social media marketing done properly takes a lot of time and the support from both internal and external resources. Some organizations are simply letting social media happen as an experiment. The danger with such an approach is that most of the time these trials are completely under-resourced and therefore unlikely to provide any meaningful insight. In addition they pose a threat to the reputation of the organisation as they are generally undertaken in an adhoc manner without the pre-requisite staff training or procedures in place by which to manage reputation and keep control. Implementing Social Media is not about opening a few free online accounts and filling in your profile.
However for many organisations a Social Media strategy can and will provide tangible and measurable results as part of an overall marketing and communications plan. We can help you develop and deploy Social Media – visit our Social Media Services page to learn how.
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2-3-4-5, yes, those are good reasons to not leverage Social Media. Social Media is not a “panacea for all business needs” as you say, and I hope that more and more people begin to understand that.
Within #1 though, I think that it would be a great example of how to spread awareness. Even if you have a small targeted audience or customer base, there is probably a larger audience out there (than 50). Face-to-face meetings may be the core touch-points, but I would also offer a small online community for your customers to interact.
Mike
Hi Mike,
Thanks for your comments but I do slightly disagree.
If we take the case of a “micro business”, basically a one man band, which services a small geographically constrained audience, what is the real benefit in creating greater awareness? Would the have the ability to deal with a massive sudden increase in new customers?
I absolutely accept that if that one man band could suddenly start to service many times more customers then there is value – but in that case they wouldn’t fall into the category of point one. They would actually be more like a real business in its start-up phase rather than being a typical one man band. In other words ready to scale.
However the real cost of executing a social initiative would also apply to a one man band – so I would question the ROI.
Interesting debate – thanks for contributing.
Ed
Great post Ed
I also agree with you re the first point. It’s similar to one of the reasons why I stress to accountants that twitter is not a necessity for them. Most of them are focused on providing their services within a defined territorial area.
Increasing awareness of their services across a wider area is unlikely to generate much of value to them and could simply serve to distract them. I know one very active accountant twitterer who gets tweets and enquiries from all over the place but has barely generated any fees from his many thousands of twitter followers.
If I may add a 6th category:
Your target audience is not involved in social media. This isn’t quite the same as your point 2. These people aren’t blocked from accessing social media, they just haven’t seen any compelling reason to experiment or commit to social media. Now, I know that one may derive referrals to such people through their friends and associates who are involved in social media. But that’s more of a long shot.