The first rumor that can be laid to rest is that it is a passing fad. According to Kelly Fiveash, “Google’s Eric Schmidt has shouldered the blame for the company’s lack of effort in nailing a successful social networking strategy to compete with rival Facebook.” “I screwed up,” said Schmidt.
Social Media is here to stay at least in some form or another. No, there isn’t something out on the horizon that I know about, it’s just that nothing is ever for sure or for certain. However, when it comes to social media for businesses, the customer has the ability to be part of the conversation, they like it and they are not going to give up the ability of being heard. Just a little warning if you do not have some kind of social media strategy in place it can be hard to put out a fire if one of your customers gives you or your product a negative review out in the social media realm.
The no cost of it is still a rumor. As it proves to be a valuable communication source, the cost of will continue to go up. No, social media is not free or even cheap. Yes, most of the platforms for social media are still free, and the services that help manage the strategies still have free basic packages available, the implementation however of a professional marketing program will increase in cost as competition for sales move more and more to social media. According to NetWitsThinkTank.com,” the number of marketers who say Facebook is “critical” or “important” to their business has increased 83% in just 2 years.”
This is easy for anyone to do. Yes, in the scheme of things setting up a blog, site or video account is rather simple but time consuming. Without a clear strategy, it can be a waste of time. Which sites are you going to join? Facebook, Twitter? What are the topics of your blog? Is your blog only going to be a place for you to post your writings or are you hoping to create an email list from your audience? Knowing what to do, why you are doing it, and where to do it takes time to learn, valuable time that the average business owner would rather spend on their business.
This takes time. It takes time and consistency to build a network of people interested in what you have to offer. In social media, you can’t just say you make the best widget in the world, you have to prove it. In fact, you might even have to give away a few widgets to prove that it is the best in the world. Once people approve of your widget, the news of the approval will spread like wildfire.
Rumors may come and rumors may go, but this is here to stay, it is not free and it is easy to do if you have a great strategy.