Is social media starting to get you confused as an entrepreneur? With so many social media platforms and little time for building actual sales, entrepreneurs and business owners are starting to get “social media-fried”. In an attempt to help solve these issues, marketing companies have been aggressively offering ‘Social Media Marketing’, large conglomerates have created new executive level positions such as CSMO (Chief Social Media Officer), and billions of dollars are now being pushed toward social media marketing.
Is social media starting to get you confused as an entrepreneur? With so many social media platforms and little time for building actual sales, entrepreneurs and business owners are starting to get “social mediafried”. In an attempt to help solve these issues, marketing companies have been aggressively offering Social Media Marketing, large conglomerates have created new executive level positions such as CSMO (Chief Social Media Officer), and billions of dollars are now being pushed toward social media marketing.
However much we discuss the impressive rise of social media among Fortune 500 companies a new report does suggest that vs. small to medium sized businesses its growth was in fact, decreased. This year, 62 percent of large corporations took advantage of the Twittersphere, up just 2 percentage points over 2010. Also this year, 58 percent of firms manage Facebook pages as compared to 56 percent last year.
However the same study indicates that smaller corporations — specifically, those included in the annual Inc. 500 listing of American’s fastest-growing companies — host twice as many blogs than their bigger, better-known brethren. And 71 percent of Inc. 500-listed companies have Facebook pages, while 59 percent use Twitter on a regular basis.
This post is not about lauding the effect proper implementation of social media can actually have on their marketing efforts or bottom dollar. We all know it actually works. There is no need to quote the astronomical numbers (just one in particular – 45% of all Indian marketing dollars are now targeted to social media companies).
Now although we know most small businesses do have some sort of social media representation vs. fortune 500 companies, it’s the continuing array of platforms that is getting us all confused. Most have got the “big three” covered, namely Facebook, Twitter and now LinkedIn, but it’s all the new platforms and add-ons that keep springing on up that have got us all bent out of shape.
To make matters worse, Google, the largest software company in the world, decided to join the fray after their first attempt, Google Buzz failed miserably. With Google+ totally integrated with all their other applications, we are being pushed against the wall to create the, “Final four”.
While I may not have the answers to solving the cumbersome task of understanding every social media company out there, I do have ample reason to suggest which companies we should be targeting and investing most of our social media strategy on. There will always be new and clever social media companies emerging on the market and other successful ones gaining in popularity and functionality, however our valuable company attention span needs to have focus and a limited approach in order to be successful.
Although I do happen to be a google groupie and therefore have a tainted and bias position, it is illogical to suggest any other company who will be as dynamic a force. In another blog post, I will explain the many reasons I believe Google+ will eventually emerge as a social media superpower if it is not considered one already. However, in order not to leave you hanging, I will suggest the primary reason which is really quite simple. The fact that Google already dominates the search, email, cloud based business platforms, and has the largest data centres in the world is just a testament to their ability to merge and integrate all their myriad cloud applications together. This is the single most pivotal reason Google+ will be able to dominate the landscape and merge email, search, business marketing, youtube, online business collaboration and communications together with their new social media application.
So there is no need to get confused. Just get focused on the “big four” and you will emerge as a social media maven.
