The boom of social media companies

 Today we are faced with the choice of running into the world of technology or being dragged into it. It has been this way before and will always be.  Humans seem to find a way to talk ourselves out of anything.  We tell ourselves we don’t want to use email because we love snail mail so much.  We tell ourselves that we need to lose weight, but end up saying it to our graves.  We tell ourselves that, over the years direct mail campaigns have produced so many calls we can’t keep count.  But do we follow the Janet Jackson theory from her song “What have you done for me lately”?

We found that more than 92 percent of all companies are planning to launch a campaign that involves either print ads (newspaper and magazine), email (now considered dead in the SPAM age) or direct mail (or direct recycle as we call it) in the next few weeks.  What these companies don’t realize is that they can reach twice as many people with half as much spending.

Social media has burst onto the scene and made an impact, fast.  Facebook is considered the third largest country on the planet. Words like ‘blog’ and ‘tweet’ are common words that don’t even need a spell check anymore.  People are going to their computers instead of bars to find their next mate.  What is going on?  Businesses face a much larger dilemma, get into this crazy world or not.  The common questions about social media that people ask me are the same:  Where do I begin? Who do I go to?  Should I hire someone to do it for me?


Well, San Diego Entrepreneurs, this article will help you answer those questions and many more.  We have taken a deeper look into the world of social media and found some things that may just impress or shock you.  Overall, businesses are very open to using this median and love the idea of a lower marketing bill every month.

However, this is a problem that I think needs to tackled right away--this is not marketing, it is branding and P.R.  The world of lead generation is one that should not be mixed into your social media campaign, at least until you have a reputation to protect.  Social media is best used as a tool to inform the public of who you are and what you do 24 hours a day, not a door to door salesman.  The etiquette on these sites may just get you kicked off forever if you abuse the system.  This being said, it is important to note that it is a specialized field that should be handled with care.

So to answer the first question, “Where do I begin?” We have to say one word, research.  Learn what all the sites do and who is on them before you jump in.  Watch the way people act and the things they say before you start to build your friend base.  Just learn.  Experience is important to your online presence; it means the world to have a person that can counteract anything that is written about you in a negative way on the web. Starting point number one should be to take a workshop and build a base of understanding about these sites and this new world of communication.  Think back to when email came out and do it again, but faster.  Don’t jump in and start making things happen if you don’t know what you are doing, it may cut you off before you have a chance to start.

The next question is “Who do I go to?” This is the base of the article.  We found that there are more “social media” companies popping up than almost any other type of service out there right now.  The thing that we found to be the most interesting about these “companies” is the fact that most of them are owned by a virgin entrepreneur.  This is scary considering that every one of their clients is putting their 24 hour a day perception in the hands of a rookie.  My advice is to first get to a seminar or a workshop and build that foundation of knowledge for this type of communication.  From there you can decide if you want to do it yourself, hire a staff member or hire an outside firm to handle it for you.  Either way, make sure that YOU understand the way it works.  So, hit the seminar circuit and go to work.

Right in line with the last question, is the answer to the final question, “Do I hire someone to do it for me?” I think everyone should know this information, so pay attention.  In this market there are people trying to make a buck any way they can, which means we all need to have our guard up a little bit. Again, there are more social media companies popping up out there than any other service right now and this means you need to be a smart consumer and not just a business owner.  The answer to the question is yes and no.  I think it is important that you, ultimately, handle your own social media and get your message across.  This means that you would have to hire someone or work more hours.  There are firms out there that will take over your campaign where it is and make it more enhanced and productive for you.  Some will even assign a consultant to educate your entire staff on the ways they can start to learn and take over the campaigns.
If I were to hire someone I would want to look into their past, not the Google stuff, their real past.  Make sure that any company that approaches you has made money using social media before, period.  There is a big difference between meeting lots of drinking buddies on Facebook and selling washer and dryer sets on Twitter, don’t get burned.  This is your company’s reputation and it will be on the internet forever, be careful.    Check the board of directors out, make sure they have been successful in the past.  Make certain the company you use has sold product of their own through these markets, because it is a whole new game.  You don’t want some 24-year-old kid that has been laid off and sitting at home in their pajamas for six months managing your reputation, it lasts forever.

“Check to make sure they are actually incorporated, surprisingly, this is a common theme in the white collar hustling community-they don’t really have a company. These Tweeters try and impress businesses with the promise of a huge network of people and in the end they have 5000 friends that never want to buy the product and the business owner is out $5000” says Eric Rice, President of Boom Media Inc. here in San Diego.

Most importantly, check to see if the company you are using has a track record of going from social media to old media, the internet to the TV, the free blogs to the bank and so on.  It does you and your business no good to have a bunch of friends in Texas on Facebook if you can only operate in California.
All in all, there will be more and more companies popping up in the social media sector and we need to start educating the business community about them right away so we don’t, saturate the market, get ripped off or make fools of ourselves.

Eric Rice goes on to say, “The bottom line here is that these businesses are still just that, businesses and need to be able to run as such.  Find a place that has experience doing just that, running a business.”
A social media company should be comprised of successful people that have used the system to their advantage before; this means they have experienced profit from social media at some time in the past.  Make sure your reputations are intact and your pocket books get larger, not the other way around.