“………whether they like it or not” We’ve borrowed this sentence from author and consultant Jay Baer in an interview recently given to SmartBrief on Social Media (read the interview here: http://ow.ly/3ql6z).
And that’s exactly what businesses of all shapes and sizes, in all industries and markets, will have to dedicate 2011 to: becoming more social. There might be businesses out there that are already “riding the social media wave” or businesses that are asking themselves the question “should I be active in social media?” or finally businesses that have as yet to realise the huge impact that social media can have on their bottom line.
But in a way it does not really matter what view each business holds on social media. What matters is the fact that social media is here to stay, is big and about to become even bigger, and is what your customers are using to talk to each other, communicate, praise, blame, gossip about, recommend, not recommend etc etc etc. If your customers are talking, why shouldn’t you? If your customers are communicating, praising your product or service, recommending it, why shouldn’t you be part of that conversation? Or, even more crucially, why should you not be part of that conversation if they are NOT recommending you and instead they are recommending your competitors (for a case in point, have a look at Tony Tickle’s recent blog here http://bit.ly/gUvkcC) or if they are not happy about an aspect of your product or service, would you not want to put that straight?
So, every business will have to be social eventually because, in the word of Jay Bear, “customers will demand that they be allowed to interact with businesses in this way [via social media] – the same way they demanded that we connect via websites or e-mail”.
So your question for 2011 ought to be not so much “should I be involved in social media?” but “How can I be involved in social media?“, ‘what resources should I dedicated to social media?” and “who should be my social media manager?”.
Be social. Make social media work for you.
Jay Baer’s blog can be found at http://www.convinceandconvert.com
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