3 Things Social Media Won't Ever Do For You

I'm going to let you in on a secret that will save you time, effort, and a world of frustration down the line: Marketing in a social media and Facebook world is not about broadcasting your message and getting the largest reach and frequency. It’s about tapping into the conversation, listening, engaging, and empowering. The loudest, biggest spenders don’t win anymore. The smartest, most flexible listeners do.

Here are three key points about social media to dispel any myths you may have heard:

1. Social media cannot make up for a bad product, company, organization, or job candidate. If you’re marketing a bad service or widget, not only will social media not help you but it will actually hurt your cause because word will spread quickly. The good news is, if you’re using social media well, you’ll quickly know when you have bad products, employees, or processes. As a good business person or marketer, you can fix these problems before they cause any serious damage.

Similarly, if you're not the right job candidate for a position at a company, or if you're a salesperson pushing the wrong product for someone, no amount of social media will help you.

It's better to focus on finding the right fit than on pushing the wrong fit through social media."

2. Social media won’t lead to overnight sales success. Success will take time, and it will come in increased buzz, referrals, traffic, and eventually, sales (or whatever it is your goal is!) I wish I could tell you that after you read this, or my new book, you’ll have all of the tools to instantly turn on the social media revenue engine and watch the money pour in. I can’t, of course.

No matter what, social media is not an instant win. We’re talking about building relationships with people, and that invariably takes time."

3. Social media is not free. It will take time and/or money to achieve sustained growth. Since it’s free to join Facebook and LinkedIn and any social network worth talking about, many marketers, salespeople, job applicants and others think social media is free, or at least cheap. Well, the good news is, no matter how large your company is, it’s nearly impossible to spend the kind of money on social media that large companies regularly have spent on network television in the last 20 years. But building and executing a likeable social media plan will take lots of time and work. Ultimately, such a plan can’t be the sole effort of any one marketing or public relations department. Instead, it must be integrated across your entire company, its agencies, and vendors.

Time is money, and social media results take time."

As long as you realize these three things, you can join the millions of people and organizations benefitting from social media every day. Join the party, and make social media work for you.

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I've got some exciting news! To kick off the release of my new book, Likeable Social Media 2nd Edition, I'm giving away 20 copies for free! Just tweet this OR visit @LikeableBook on Twitter and share the contest post.

Now it's your turn. What do you think the truths and myths about social media are? What have your successes and failures been with social media so far? How about your challenges? Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.

Dave Kerpen is the founder and CEO of Likeable Local. He is also the co-founder and Chairman of Likeable Media, and the New York Times-bestselling author of Likeable Social Media and Likeable Business, and the new collection, Likeable Leadership. To read more from Dave on LinkedIn, please click the FOLLOW button above or below.

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