Easily Amused for No Apparent Reason

The clock is ticking. Time is running out. Pretty soon all of your competitors will be using social media, and will start the conversation with your customers, giving them a competitive advantage that will make it hard for you to catch up.

Who cares if my competitors are using social media? Why adopt a social media strategy? Why now?

There already has been a lot of ink dedicated to why businesses should implement a social media strategy. One of my favorite articles is “20 Reasons Your Small Business should use Social Media,” by Shana Albert of the Digital Bliss blog.

Some of her stand-out reasons:

• Online reputation management.
• Word of mouth marketing.
• Small business can compete with large companies.
• Create great traffic and help search engines.
• Direct conversation to a specific niche.
• Cheaper than traditional marketing.
• Find out what your customers want.
• Your customers play an active role in your business.

If those aren’t compelling reasons enough, I suggest you go back to the original article and read all 20 reasons.

But why now? Shouldn’t you just wait to see how these “untried” social media schemes are going to play out?

According to the article “9 Trends to Watch in a Down Economy,” by Wendy Piersall at Escalate Media, there are already case studies with data to back - up the success companies like Dell and Comcast have had with Twitter, for example.

…companies and brands are getting to a point where they can’t ignore social media anymore. In 2009, we are going to hit a crossover point in which those who are still afraid of social media marketing are going to be left behind if they don’t jump in now.

Ok, you may say, so what, that’s just the opinion of a “blogger.”

According to this Business Week article, it’s a must-have now. The cost of publishing information has gone down to practically zero (see my earlier post here about the free economy), anybody and everybody can publish about you, your product or anything.

The divide between the publishers and the public is collapsing. This turns mass media upside down. It creates media of the masses.

Customers are talking about you, or your competitors are talking to your customers (0r have plans to). It’s time you become part of the conversation.