Social Media, when done well, should be part of an integrated marketing mix.

Debbie

Thanks for noticing my post.

You wrote:

“The question I immediately thought in response is why? Why would you do that? Why would any forward-thinking business today take an a no-can-do attitude towards social media? The short answer comes down to fear. Fear of the unknown. Fear of doing it poorly.”

Another answer, though, is cost. And related to that, priority.

Is a Twitter account the first thing a business should do to win a new customer? The last? Somewhere in the middle?

The answer, to be sure, is that you need to be wary of treating social media like a channel at all. It is indeed, to drink the Cluetrain Kool-Aid, “conversational,” and thus difficult to pin down.

We can at least admit that many businesses can run simply on “channels” and they address social media as needed for the reputation piece only, not to gain customers directly.

An example I used in my AdWords book comes to mind. For whatever reason, though it was off topic, the publishers wanted me to put in a section about blogging. I relented.

I wanted to remind people that whether it’s AdWords or blogging or whatever hot, utterly vital channel we’re exhorting you to use now, businesses do grow and make lots of money ignoring these things, and doing the stuff they’re good at.

I brought up the example of mattress retailer that grew mainly from traditional radio, print, and TV ads, headed up by a star entrepreneur named Christine Magee. No blog. No social media sprinkles.

If you try to find Christine Magee on Twitter today, you won’t. You’ll find some other Christine Magee. Dubbed Xtinelicious, to be exact.

Whether that should matter to the wealthier Christine Magee is, I suppose, a matter of perspective.