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Public Relations & Social Media | The Value of Social Media
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There seems to be a very conflicting consensus as to whether or not social media is useful, worth the investment, or if it even produces results. As an employee of a small business, I see how social media affects our business and how we benefit from it; this blog alone helps to bring traffic to our other business ventures, and my Twitter accounts help to bring traffic to the blog. It is a fairly small investment of my time to keep an eye on my Twitter accounts (though, admittedly, I spend more time on some accounts than others), but to increase my blog traffic, which it does, I have a relatively low amount of effort I need to exert. I know too, though, that my traffic would probably be higher if I did invest more of my time there.

However successful these tools are for me and for the other blogs and websites that our company runs, I know that it doesn't work for everyone. Furthermore, I know that it does work for some. Unlike some statements I read in a Wall Street Journal post, I know that social media is effective and worth the investment, even if just for increased traffic. From the WSJ's post titled "Entrepreneurs Question Value of Social Media",

"The hype right now exceeds the reality," says Larry Chiagouris, professor of marketing at Pace University's Lubin School of Business.

Also from that WSJ post were some findings from a survey:

Meanwhile, a separate survey of 500 U.S. small-business owners from the same sponsors found that just 22% made a profit last year from promoting their firms on social media, while 53% said they broke even. What's more, 19% said they actually lost money due to their social-media initiatives.

An interesting question arose when I was reading this: How much effort was put into these "social-media initiatives"? As with any initiative in business, you cannot expect success or positive results from something you do not fully participate in. Were these social media initiative things they began but soon abandoned? Did they expect their initiatives to do all the work on their own? Like I mentioned in my post, Public Relations & Social Media | Your Social Media Efforts Will Not Sell Themselves, social media is not for every company, nor will it be successful for your company if you do not do the necessary steps to ensure that success. Your social media success is directly correlated to the amount of promotion you use, your efforts, and the time you invest in them. You can definitely lose money on your social media initiatives if you spend the money to invest in social media and fail to correctly maintain it.

WSJ's post also wrote:

A business owner's time and energy spent on social-media marketing—Folbot's Mr. AvRutick says he dedicates about an hour a day—could also go to waste. Fifty percent of the latter survey's respondents say it requires more effort than expected.

Throughout the life of this blog (and others who have blogged on the topic of social media), I've been pretty honest and straight-forward about the amount of effort it requires, as are others who have been successful using these tools, as well as businesses who know the reality of marketing and public relations. (There are rarely ventures in marketing and PR that take little effort; social media is not exception.)

Social media wasn't meant to be a magical answer to our marketing and PR problems; rather, it was to increase our communication with our buyers and target audience. Social media allows you to put the public back into "Public Relations" since it encourages so much collaboration and communication between the public and your company.

Creating a blog or spending your time tweeting and not helping people find it is like create an advertisement you never air on television or send to print; what is the point of doing it? Social media takes patience and a time commitment.

What's your take? You're hear reading this blog post, perhaps referenced from someone's tweet linking here. How important is social media? Do you think it is useless, or dependent on the company's efforts?