Imagine Your Reality

When I give talks on social media to small businesses, the following social media myths are brought up, so I thought I’d discuss those myths.

It’s just a Fad

Some people think social media is just a fad. That it’ll eventually go away, or be something that people will grow out of. This is a myth. The reality is that social media has already been around since the early 2000′s. People have been using sites such as Linkedin and MySpace since the early 2000′s. The advent of Twitter, Facebook, and other social networking sites also is putting increasing momentum into this phenomenon. Finally, because social media sites can be accessed via mobile phones, they are increasingly becoming integrated into our daily lives.

I’m local and don’t want my information all over the internet

Many people worry that if they get on social media sites their information will be less secure or go all over the place. In the case of small  businesses they worry that they’ll get contacted by people from across the U.S., which aren’t useful clients for them.

If you have an email address or bank online or pay bills online, your information is already out there and social media won’t significantly alter that. If as a small business your main focus is only to interact with local clients, it would still be a mistake to not use social media. The majority of my social media contacts are local ones, in large part because the network you connect with is the one you already are in touch with. Social media allows you to stay more visible to that network and connect with people they know as well. Most of those people are local.

This isn’t to say that you won’t get some contacts who aren’t local, but even then you may actually be able to help them out, and that can be beneficial for your business as well as for yourself.

I don’t have time for social media

Many businesses will claim they don’t have time for social media, but if they don’t have time for social media, they likely don’t have time to run a business either. Social media is part of the marketing and branding for your business. If you can’t make time for that activity, then you probably don’t have time to connect with your clients or prospects, or do the other activities necessary to build relationships that lead to business. Whether you like it or not, social media is essential to building relationships with other people, and to marketing.

There are no doubt other myths and reasons businesses tell themselves that they can’t do social media. But while they do this, they also put themselves further and further behind on learning the technology and capitalizing on the conversation. They give their competition an edge in terms of letting them get on social media and start using it to connect to prospects.

Social media here to stay. It’s not going away…it’s not a fad, and it is something businesses must adapt to, in order to fully reach out and connect with their clients.