I’m worried we’re putting too much time and money into social media. Do we push on?

Dear Aunty B,

Over the last two years we’ve put a lot of time an effort into ramping up our social media marketing efforts. We Tweet, we post on Facebook, we maintain our LinkedIn account and we blog. The team has even got me on Twitter and I Tweet religiously once a day.

 It’s all good fun and our followers have increased on all these sites. But I’m getting the sense we are not driving any new business from it and I am wondering if we shouldn’t pull back and concentrate on some more traditional forms of marketing.

Yours,
Social Media Sceptic

Dear Social Media Sceptic,

Firstly, can I just say good on your for backing your team in this area and getting involved yourself.

I know plenty of business owners who like to talk about how good their company’s social media efforts and then I get back to the office, jump on Twitter and I can’t find them! It’s a personal medium and personalities need to get involved, even if it is in a small way.

I wouldn’t necessarily be pulling back from your social media efforts given that you’ve come this far – it does sound like you’ve build quite a presence and it would be shame to lose that momentum.

But I would be getting stuck into your marketing manager about measuring the return you are getting.

There are number of companies that can now track the effectiveness of your social media campaigns – get in touch with one of them and spend a month or two really tracking what you’re doing.

Or if you want to take a really simple approach, do a few social-media-only promotions with special details for your Twitter and Facebook followers.

That should get you a very quick feel for the value of social media as a selling tool.

Be smart,

Aunty B