Time 2 Stay Social – One of the biggest objections to establishing a strong social media marketing presence is time. Many businesses are happy maintaining their status quo. They’ve established a foothold in their market and are okay with using their traditional marketing methods to create or maintain brand awareness. These companies have established sufficient staff to create this need and overextending them or adding new staff could be a detriment to their bottom line. The time it takes to train new staff or add to their staff’s workload isn’t worth it.
The problem with this line of thinking is that it completely ignores the online revolution and allows for competitors to establish a foothold within the online community. According to a recent eMarketer.com survey the average adult in Canada spends 9 hours and 43 minutes each day consuming media. The amount of time that interaction takes place digitally has grown to four hours and twelve minutes, which leaves just over 5 hours for radio, print and TV consumption.
Only marketing yourself traditionally leaves you exposed to your competition becoming the trusted source for content and information in the online space in your industry. Moreover, that number increased by 71 minutes since 2011. On average, your audience is spending almost 18 minutes more online per day than they did 4 years ago. The increasingly dependent relationship between consumers and their mobile devices will only further precipitate a reduced relationship between traditional media and consumers. It won’t be long before social media marketing becomes traditional media.
If you haven’t yet begun the process of establishing your brand online, look at it like beginning a fitness routine after a long layoff. It’s not about finding the time; it’s about making time. Companies everywhere are utilizing outsourced social marketers more than ever before, as a means of working with their current corporate structure and allowing experts to establish their online presence and help staff play catch-up.
More and more, your clientele is waiting for you to reach them online. That time they spend digitally will be taken up by your competitors should you not be there to properly answer their search queries on Google or even their direct questions on Facebook and Twitter. With the increased consumption of social media, the question no longer is “do you have time to be social?” With the potential for loss in market share due to a lack of a social presence, the question has now become, “do you have time not to be social?”
