Jennifer Laycock of Search Engine Guide pens a great rebuttal, 10 Reasons You should Use Social Media, to John Mariotti, President and CEO of The Enterprise Group, whose recent post on Small Business Trends is Ten Reasons Not to Use Social Media.
Among John's points are:
- "Social networking is in the evolutionary stage, and as such, all of the sites that exist now will change, evolve become either more useful and secure or go away. The lessons are there in recent history: Compuserve, early versions of AOL, Prodigy and all the other now defunct or otherwise transitory Internet, email or proprietary Web systems."
- "Just when a lot of people learn to use one of the social networking sites/systems, someone will come up with a newer, better, cooler or more fashionable one."
- "Real business people realize that this social networking trend is superficial. True relationships may originate in email or other similar venues, but must become personal and not electronic to be of meaningful value."
- "I am simply too busy to meddle with something that is at least largely populated with people who have nothing better to do with their time, or others who think is it somehow an easy way to really be connected to a lot of people."
I have to side with Jennifer here. Here's the thing: social interaction online is not about the technology or the platform. It doesn't matter if the technology is evolutionary or will go away or change into something else. I've been interacting online since the days of CompuServe, and I recognize that today's Twitter may be tomorrow's Prodigy. What these technologies do is facilitate and extend my social relationships, many of which originated offline, or start online and gain an offline component when I get a chance to meet a person in the flesh whom I've shared discussion with online. But I also have deep relationships with people who I've not yet met in person, because we've exchanged thoughts and ideas over time, using online tools. Yes, there are superficial relationships online, as there are offline - the deepness of a particular relationship for me depends on its particular context and nature, not whether it exists offline, online, or both.
As for John's assertion about social networks being populated with people "who have nothing better to do with their time", every day I see and have experienced actual business taking place online: businesses gaining clients and leads, making deals, doing authentic PR and marketing, getting great ideas from customers.
Do you think small business should use social media?
Tags: small business, social media
