2012 Is The Beginning Of The End For The Non-Social Business

  By Tac Anderson | December 1, 2011 - 7:47 am |

In early 2010 I wrote a post about the 3 types of social media strategy. You can just bolt social media on to their existing marketing strategies, or you can optimize social media throughout your company to maximize your existing strategy or there is the elusive approach of maximizing your business for social media. This would be to build your strategy from the ground up around social media.  Most companies using the bolt on strategy, some companies are flirting with the maximizing social media approach and arguably few companies are using the purely social strategy (companies like Facebook and Zynga may be the closest examples).

There is also the obvious approach of ignoring social media all together. This approach has actually worked well for a number of years but this approach won’t work well going forward. The ongoing recession will continue to drive greater consumer and employee distrust and without the return on total investment that social media can bring (greater returns and lower costs) companies will find traditional only marketing approaches to be increasingly costly and ineffective.

Every company needs to become more social going forward not because your business model will quite working (at least not right away) but because your competitors – direct or indirect – will gain such a competitive advantage over you that your market and your ability to compete in that market will disappear. If you don’t build the capabilities and attributes that go along with being an active participant in social media you will eventually find:

  • You won’t be able to acquire or retain new customers
  • You won’t be able to compete for the best talent
  • Your partners will stop doing business with you
In short you will first feel the pain of trying to compete against businesses who have these capabilities and you will then start to notice your cost of doing business increasing and your effectiveness to compete going up, until you either come to a crisis and have to try and play catch up or you just cease to exist.
For companies who refuse to begin adopting social media, 2012 will be the beginning of the end. But never fear, we’ll probably write some good case studies about your failure to adapt so you won’t be completely forgotten.

About Tac Anderson

Social media anthropologist. Communications strategist. Business model junkie. Chief blogger here at New Comm Biz.
Tagged , , . Bookmark the permalink.
  • http://about.me/jkiss James Kiss

     I remember writing down notes when Facebook had their big announcement a few months ago. What I saw was the future and what we will all come to expect from businesses. In the short-term, businesses will need to ‘get’ social or get out. There are so many opportunities to available to enhance relationships with people through social media you almost have to wonder why some companies don’t do it or suck at it. The point that keeps slapping me in the face is, facebook/twitter is more personal than a direct mail piece sent to my home address (often with the wrong name). This should get marketers excited, not confused.

  • http://www.newcommbiz.com/ tacanderson

    We have just scraped the surface of social and companies that don’t start now will end up so far behind they won’t be able to catch up without suffering a near death experience.

  • http://about.me/jkiss James Kiss

    I’m very excited for what the future holds. I think we’re going to enter a whole new ecosystem.

  • Pingback: Commerce Is Social | @NewCommBiz

  • Pingback: 10 Steps to Maximizing Your Brands Facebook Timeline for Pinterest Engagement | @NewCommBiz

  • http://news.experiencenottinghamshire.com/ Junior Chipper

    It was absolutely true! All business marketers deals with social media marketing and it would be a great gap and disadvantage if you aren’t sincere on taking it as a strategical marketing plan.