There Are No Excuses for Companies Not to Engage in Social Media

There are many brands and products on the market that people simply don’t want to engage in conversations with. Does that mean that those brands should avoid using social media? I’m sitting at a table writing this and next to me there are placemats, coasters, an alarm clock, and a potted plant. I can tell you for a fact that I could care less to engage in conversations with any of the companies that made these products (of course this doesn’t mean that other people don’t want to have these conversations). Nevertheless, these companies should all be engaging in some level of social media.

One of the assumptions that are floating around the social media space is that organizations have to use social media to reach out to their users. That is incorrect. Social media can also be a great internal communication tool as well. Truth be told, there may be some brands out there that just do not attract or warrant conversations. I don’t know who these brands are but I’m sure there are a few out there.

Essentially there are 2 ways to test if your company should engage in external social media:

• Check if there are already communities/discussions about your brand/product out there. If yes, then you should engage in external social media to tap into those communities. You will also want to foster the continued growth of those communities.
• If you scour the internet and determine that nobody is talking about your brand/product then you can try to create/foster these conversations and communities yourself. If you find that people still do not respond or want to engage with you then external social media is probably not right for your organization.

What about social media for internal communication?

• Your organization can still create a corporate twitter account for employees to follow company growth or progress.
• Your organization can still create a blog to talk about company issues, policies, ideas, etc. Your organization also can create a corporate wiki to share tools, strategies and information.
• Your organization can use linkedin to prospect new employees or search for sales leads.

These are just a few simple ways that your organization can use social media internally. Bottom line is that there is no excuse for not getting involved in social media. If you truly feel that none of your users out there want to talk to you and that you can’t create communities, then use social media internally. Don’t you think it’s about time?

Jacob Morgan is a social media consultant and runs a team of technical SEOs in San Francisco. follow him on twitter.