Currently, businesses of all sizes find themselves in the position where they’re faced with “Social Media, coming ready or not!”. To many it feels like a scary step to get involved with this “new” marketing area BUT you can be certain that it’ll be even scarier not to!

For many, the scary part is that it feels like walking into the unknown. The idea of handing even part of the control of our marketing to the very people we are looking to appeal to and attract fills us with dread.

But don’t worry, you’ve actually been doing it for years.

It is exactly the situation we are in when it comes to “Word of mouth” – something that has been the lifeblood of many a small (and not so small) business down the years. What happens? People share their opinions on you and your products with friends and colleagues.

Well, social media is doing the same – simply on a larger scale by tapping into tools which give us the ability to do that online and share with hundreds / thousands of people at the press of a button. That just got scary again, didn’t it?

More Control with Social Media

What social media does give us, though, is the ability to track what is being said and find where those conversations are taking place – something which is seldom achievable offline.

Approached correctly, it gives us the chance to participate in how those messages about us are being communicated, avoiding the digital equivalent of ‘chinese whispers’ or worse where we are unable to deliver a balanced view of … whatever. To a certain extent, we can influence what’s being said rather than simply leaving it to run its own course so, in many ways, we’re in a better position online!

The problem is that most companies don’t make the most of the opportunities that these tools open up to us. They don’t have their “listening posts” set up even at a basic level with tools like Google Alerts, an RSS reader, TweetBeep  etc. – when they don’t know what’s being said, they really can’t hope to influence it.

Essentially, we leave ourselves open to the potential downside of social and refuse to accept any of the benefits – now, that is what I call scary!

Get Listening

So first things first – before taking those first tentative steps into new areas of social media (or putting on your size 12s and a nice thick blindfold and jumping in, as if often the case) get your listening posts in place and be ready to use the information that you gather.

Even if you are already active, it’s never too late to start and the benefits are still all out there for you.  Essentially it’s up to you – the conversations will continue to take place anyway. That’s the issue nowadays – there is little we can do but embrace the changes that have been taking place and participate!

It’s that or be left behind and that does put us fairly and squarely back in “Scary Land”!

Related posts:

1. Social Media – are you ready?
2. Google helping social media? Surely not!
3. Being found via Social Media and Business Blogs