Social Media Savvy

A common concern, and one brought up in an article by Maine Today is what happens if I invest my time in a social media tool and it loses its popularity?

The solution the article offered was to start a blog and that will be the perfect channel, but that doesn't seem like much of a solution at all.

Follow me, logically, here for a second. If you are engaged on a medium you will know where the party is moving to (if it happens to move at all). Poor analogy, but if you are in a room, new to the party and someone shouts that the party is now down the street you were there, you heard him scream and you know where to go. If you remain disengaged from the medium you will not know where the party is at until it has moved past the early adopter stage.

Another key thing to remember is that the relationships that you have built don't go away, you can just continue the conversation and shift it into the new medium. It creates a constant presence. Lets be real, the popular social media tool will probably shift sometime and it probably won't be that far in the future. However, if you wait to jump in now you will lose valuable time to build customer relationships, run the risk of competitors beating you out in the customer experience and social media arenas and as I mentioned earlier you may miss what the new trend is until it is late in the game.

Additionally blogs may not be the "calm eye to the social media storm". Blogs don't work for every business and not every demographic uses blogs. What happens if your customer base isn't into blogs? I really recommend using a consultant in the social media industry to really delve into the research about your industry, demographics and then create a tailored social media strategy to fit your business. Social media has such a low cost associated with using it that it is worth it to invest in dollars to ensure that you will use it in the best and most advantageous ways possible.

There are many risks involved with getting into social media, but being worried about there being a switch in the tools is not a reason to abstain from involvement.