Ok, if you have been here before you will know that I am a fan of social media and what it can achieve for a business, or rather, what a business is missing out on if it doesn’t have a social media strategy, it also gives rise to a number of possible problems for businesses.

The twinning of social media and business has created a new industry – the social media “guru” or consultant – experts” promising to help you leverage the power of sites like Twitter, Facebook and MySpace to raise your profile and boost your profits.  After all why hire a consultant if they can’t increase your profits (somehow).

Between several hundred and many thousand dollars, pounds and or euros, you can hire a social media consultant.  Amazingly people do – nice money if you can get it!

Read peoples blogs, spam emails and you will be offered insider tips” based on “deep expertise” in the field – Oops sites like Twitter are only 3 years old so I can’t see how someone can have “in-depth expertise” after 3 years.  The real popularity of Twitter has been in the past 18 months.  In February 2008 twitter had 475,000 users but saw growth of over 1300% to rise to just under 8 million in time for it’s 3rtd birthday (March 2009) so in all probability a consultants “deep expertise” is based on something like 12 months use of Twitter.

That isn’t even enough time to produce meaningful statistics of their work.

Also compare this growth with other “well known sites”  Google (officially) launched in Sept 1998 – three years later it had nearly 18mm US uniques (comscore), and Facebook launched in mid 2004 – three years later it had  nearly 27mm US unique users (comscore).

So lets try and be realistic about all this hype – and yes I do like social media and I use if frequently and yes it works for our business, but I would nor profess to have in depth behind the senses knowledge we have achieved our success with social media by using good old fashion commonsense.

It works for us then it can work for you, you just have to plan it properly.  If you need any help then please ask we will gladly help, but please don’t expect us to use consultant type phrases or charge consultant type fees and importantly don’t expect us to guarantee to increase your profits.

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Customer service, Internet marketing, Search engine optimization, Social media

Social media