Six Myths Of Social Media Debunked

02/18/2009

The increasing popularity of social media has made it perfectly clear that your business must either adapt or die out. If you have still not begun making use of social media, odds are your competition already has and you are falling dangerously behind. However, before you begin there are a few commonly held myths that need to be debunked.

The first myth of social media is that it is free. This is not entirely true. While many of the sites that are used for this purpose do not charge a fee, it does require certain skills, time, and money in order to incorporate them into your marketing program. As a matter of fact, large companies will pay $50,000 and up for just two months worth of a campaign. This budget will include the creation of a microsite that will serve as the hub, widgets to distribute the content to sites such as Twitter, Flickr, and Facebook, and complex functions that add to the overall programming and design costs.

The second social media myth is that anyone can do it. An ever expanding group of people are claiming to be Internet marketing gurus, but the fact of the matter is very few of them have ever executed a successful Internet marketing campaign.

The next myth is that social media success comes fast. Unless your company is already famous, success is not likely to come over night. However, that’s not to say that you can’t reach a lot of people very quickly and with less effort compared to traditional marketing methods. Twitter is an incredibly useful site to promote viral videos, articles, web sites, and more. When people like your product or brand they are going to follow you and urge their friends to do so as well.

The fourth myth is that it can all be done effectively in-house. Sadly this couldn’t be further from the truth. You are going to need contacts, strategy, tools, and plenty of experience. It is not usual for in-house teams to posses the right combination of these skills and they too often attempt to reinvent the wheel.

The fifth social media myth is that as long as you have a good product or service the people will find you on their own. This has never been and probably will never be true. No matter how good you are, if people aren’t finding you, it’s pointless. The tools are all there for you, e.g. StumbleUpon, Digg, and Twitter, but if people aren’t finding your profiles and sharing these links with their friends you won’t make any progress.

The sixth and final myth to be debunked is that social media results can’t be measured. The truth is that there are various resources you can use in order track your progress. These may include comments on your pages, being mentioned on other blogs, blog advertising results, and web site click-throughs. Google trends, Twitter search, and Google Analytics are also great places to get precise statistics.

All the tools you need for an effective campaign are out there, but unfortunately there are not as many true Internet marketing gurus.

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