Taking advantage of social media: easier said than done

Like me, many small business operators would have clicked onto SmartCompany’s recent story about the proliferation of Australians using social media hoping for some insights into how they could go about tapping into this lucrative market.

But like me too, they probably came away none the wiser.

Because while its all well and good for the interviewees to state the bleeding obvious – that there really is a lot of people who rely on social networking for their fix of virtual gasbagging and gossip and yes businesses need to take advantage of this, the fact remains that there is no simple way to do what the experts suggest.

Like television in the 60s, but then again…

Without giving my age away completely, in some ways it’s not unlike the phenomenon of television in the early 60s.

Massive adoption, unprecedented word-of-mouth and a genuine buzz about this amazing new communications medium were the order of the day. And for advertisers, near panic to get involved in the medium before the competition did.

But where the analogy goes pear shaped is in the barrier to entry to the medium. Sure, businesses in the 60s had a steep new learning curve in understanding how to use the medium in both form and distribution, but there was nothing a healthy budget and informed advertising agency couldn’t address.

Social networking is so much harder.

Participation, not advertising

The reason is that you aren’t simply buying your ‘space’ on a passive communications medium – although a presence is possible in this way.

This medium is much less of a communications medium and more of a community.

Instead of a single entity creating a single message that is distributed to many, the participants are actually responsible for the communication themselves, meaning it is far more difficult to interrupt it to bring them your important message.

It’s a bit like showing ads on the big screen during a break at a sports event. Sure you may get the attention of the odd attendee, but the bulk of the crowd have far more important things to attend to.

In fact, it is virtually impossible to interrupt in the way advertising always has. Sure, you can be associated with it by having your name appear within the page or sidebar, but it can just as easily be ignored.

It simply isn’t as pivotal to the medium as advertising on interruptive media like television and radio and to a lesser degree print.

So becoming involved in the medium is far more difficult than simply creating an ad and buying space within the medium.

Let’s get engaged

As many commentators point out, it’s the engagement with social network users that creates the desired benefit. But commercial organisations seeking to butt into an online dialogue are about as welcome as a telemarketer at dinnertime.

And as we’ve pointed out in this blog countless times before, engagement consumes time that smaller business operators simply don’t have.

What’s more, because the dialogue has to come from an actual human and in most cases takes place in real time, it’s nigh on impossible to simply hire someone to do it on your behalf – as many organisations have found.

Instead of the genuine warts and all conversations that social networkers love, you get a bland promotional message that usually misses the mark completely.
Even if it doesn’t, the chances of cutting through the swathes of far more interesting messages from your mates are slim indeed.

But try, try again…

This isn’t to say that smaller business operators shouldn’t at least make an attempt to immerse themselves in this online revolution. Even if they don’t have a strong presence within social networks they can at least attempt some conversations so as to understand what makes it – and its participants, tick.

It’s just that in the social networking space, intention and reality are two entirely different beasts.

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Craig Reardon is a leading eBusiness educator and founder and director of independent web services firm The E Team which provide the gamut of ‘pre-built’ website solutions, technologies and services to SMEs in Melbourne and beyond.