Social Media: Use It Or Lose It!

Steve Carrell once said, “Is it true if you don’t use it, you lose it?” When it comes to social media, I say yes.  Over the past couple years social media use has skyrocketed and everyone’s mom and grandma are on twitter and facebook…but you already know that.

Social networks are all about sharing information and communicating with each other. I don’t know anyone on facebook who refuses to have friends and strictly uses it for storing photos and taking “when will I die” quizzes.

Over the years social networks have been adopted by businesses who realize that they too can benefit by having stronger communication and interaction with their customers and users. Since then there have been countless articles about incorporating social media into your business.  “YOU MUST TWITTER, YOU MUST FACEBOOK, YOU MUST BLOG!” Understandably, many of our clients come to us asking if a blog, twitter feed or facebook page is right for them. Often times it is, often times it isn’t, it depends on the product, service and business model.

Once you decide if social media is right for you ask yourself an important question. Are you going to follow through and USE IT? Are your tweets worthy of real esate on your homepage? Are you going to blog regularly? Are these posts valuable to your users?

I’ll admit, two years ago I thought I was a blogger. I launched a blog and began posting and writing on it pretty regularly. After a couple months the posts slowed down and I began to view my blog as a thorn in my side. Seeing that my last post was 2 months ago hurt my ego and definitely hurt my page views. I realized that writing blog posts in my personal time was something that I viewed as a nuisance and wasn’t enjoyable to me, so I stopped.  I have recently started blogging at home again. However I don’t actually write much anymore.  Instead, I use a blogging service called tumblr to simply post videos, photos and links that I like.  And that’s fine. My goal isn’t to have thousands of readers and insightful content. It’s just a personal thing that I enjoy doing.

So ask yourself , is tweeting, facebooking or blogging stressing you out and making you feel lazy and unmotivated? If the answer is yes, your content is probably echoing those emotions. If you have 10 social media icons on your site but you’re only using two of them, get rid of the rest. Collecting social media icons on your site is about as cool as writing “beta” next to your logo.

Like it or not social media is here to stay.  It will no doubt play a huge role in the web for a long time to come. Social media is a huge realm, no one is an expert in all areas. Stick to what you’re passionate about and it will bring value to your users. Because if you don’t use it, you’ll lose it!