I have had a number of people remark on how they..

Can’t get their arms around Social Media.

I can see this happening, especially with so many businesses still hanging on to old traditional methods of marketing and attempting to adapt them to be part of their social media strategy.

The big thing people get hung up on is their insistence in forcing ‘Conversion’ of every contact made online into a sale.  Sure, it would be lovely to have a 60 –70% conversion. That just is not going to happen with most businesses no matter what they can get their arms around, but that is the vision of many, many misguided business leaders.  Over expectations of what the internet can produce.

Can’t Force an ROI out of Twitter

Where business people get frustrated is in the results of social networking.  The number one questions I answer from questions businesses who have been on Twitter for awhile ask me is..

How come I do not get response to more than 1% of the people following me on Twitter?

The second most popular questions I am asked has to do with Facebook with..

What is the value of a Fan Page when the average fan that joins the page has no intention of reaction to any of the content being posted there?

And..of course, running a close third has to do with LinkedIn with..

Why is the LinkedIn community not responsive to the conversations, but more reactive to sending everyone self promotions for things of no value?

Misunderstanding Social Networking

What the business community forgets is social networking is now ‘The Market’.  Each group or club created online is a representation of a market.  These individuals who join the markets are part of the growing number of people fed up with mainstream marketing from TV, Radio and Print media.  The underlying disgust is with the deception many of these traditional mainstream marketing campaigns have designed to cover.

These business are seeing this pull back from the consumers offline and are following these individuals online with the same marketing strategies..’deceive at all cost until the ROI goal is reached’.

It is those businesses who want to keep arms length from the consumer base who will never get their arms around Social Media.  Unfortunately, these are the same businesses who will pay large amounts of money to have case studies produced disavowing the effectiveness of social media.

Here Comes the ROI

My suggestion is, once you get your arms around social media through understanding how to use social networking effectively, do not let go.  The ROI for those who leran how to Tweet effectively, use Facebook as best as it allows you and puts up with the spam from LinkedIn will be the businesses that prove social media is a sound method of showing the world your trustworthiness.

Let me know how I can help.