Why you don't need social media.

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Created on Thursday, 17 November 2011 15:29
Written by iQiniso
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why do we need social media?There has been a lot of “umming” and “arring” about whether or not iQiniso should have a Facebook page and Twitter profile. We have finally decided to go ahead and take the plunge, but there has been a lot of thought that went into the decision which we thought we would share here for the benefit of those going through the same process.

First off Facebook and Twitter is not for everyone. If you make toilet paper, we are not sure that having a Facebook logo on your pack is going to do much for you. Maybe we are wrong and people are really in to their loo roll. If you own a night club… maybe there is a strong case for you to have a Facebook page.

You need to decide for yourself if you need to have a Facebook page or Twitter Profile. Growing up, you were often asked why you did something and upon replying  “Because Little Jimmy, did it” the swift come back was “If Little Jimmy jumped off a cliff would you follow?”. This is the Facebook/Twitter argument we are putting forward. Are you joining because it makes sense or “because everybody else is doing it”. Remember, there is no safety in numbers, it is just a bigger target!

So these are some of the questions that we asked our selves before we clicked “Create Page” and “Create Profile”.

1.    But we are a business?
Social media is about socializing. We are a business. Is it really ok to mix business with pleasure? This was the biggest hurdle to overcome. The ideas behind the likes of Facebook and Twitter were not really anything more sophisticated than ‘I want to know what my friends are up to”.  For a business to get involved in these sorts of areas, there must a compelling reason to do so. If you are running your business along the lines of the generally accepted model, your goal is to maximize shareholder value. As such any conversation you have with anyone pertaining to your business is about making money. Is this really what we want to talk about on Facebook. “hi, please like us and then give us lots of money”.  We needed to find something a lot better than that!

2.    We will make tonnes of money!
When chatting with many marketers, the focus up until now has been on getting as many “likes” and “follows” as possible. Okay, and then what? Without klout, you really aren’t going to be able to achieve much. And even then have we not seen all of this before? This is the same argument that traditional paper based media proposed for ad space. We have 100’000 readers so there is a good chance that someone somewhere may perhaps maybe sort of see your advert and depending on their frame of mind they may decided to maybe buy whatever you are selling…possibly. If we were going to take the trouble to have a presence in the social media space, we needed a reason a little more solid than this. The only people making money from Facebook are the good people at Facebook. We need to find a different way to quantify the value that Facebook is bringing to our business and money just won’t cut it.

3.    So! An extra 2 hours in a 25 hour day?!
We are already pulling some stupid hours as developers. Often we start our day at 7am and don’t leave the terminal till 10pm on a good day, midnight if you cannot find good documentation for that $#@!% API! So where are we going to get the time to update our Facebook and Twitter profile. We could employ someone to do it but then who pays for that? Increase our hourly rate? Dear customers, we will be charging you more to interact with you on Facebook and Twitter. Not the best marketing message. The main thing here is that if you are going to do something go big or go home. Social Media only works if it is fresh and up to date all the time. What you did three weeks ago is not really “hip and happening”.

4.    And then what?
So now we have more followers than Kim Kardashian and Facebook is threating to block our page because it is too busy. What next? Do we then start pushing commercial messages down the throats of our followers and risk destroying any value we may have created to date? Do we just maintain the properties for the sake of maintaining the properties? Actually, WHAT IS THE POINT OF ALL OF THIS?! It just seems like a giant hamster wheel.

Eventually we came up with a few answers that we gladly share with you.