I get a lot of calls from prospects curious if social media can help their business, and I tend to follow a ten minute on prospective calls. The answer is yes - if you sell a product or service, then social media can help, but it's unlike other services you pay for. Social media can't be outsourced effectively like PPC, websites, direct mail, or other marketing services. It requires either internal resources who really know your business, or an external resource you allow into your business to represent you to the online world.
There's no getting around it. It's one of the reasons we've been pouring so much work into the Social Media Headhunter series, as training people on how to use social media is a lot harder and more expensive than simply hiring someone with the necessary skills.
That said, there are two main paths for using social media to improve your business.
If you currently have a marketing plan and budget:
Forget viral campaigns and fancy sites that replace your forums. Use social media to listen and respond to your audiences where they congregate. For this, pay a consultant to analyze your current marketing plan, and then implement those changes.
If you want to start a business, or launch a product, and you want social media to take the place of your marketing budget - then you shouldn't spend any money for anything but training:
Spending money in a campaign is pretty foolish at this point. Social media can't make something out of nothing, and if you don't have a marketing plan and budget, the only value is in the time you put into your potential network. There's a high risk of failure in this strategy, but that's really depedent on you. If all you wanted was to make a quick buck, then PPC is really to do. If you're looking to cheaply market your product without the expense of marketing, well, you got what you paid for.
I'm in the midst of building training videos for my recruiting practice on how to use social media to hire more candidates, and when it's done, I'll be turning my attention to specific ways that you as a small business owner can use social media tools to boost sales, get in the paper (to boost sales), and tap the online word to find evangelists (who will help you boost sales). This blog has been badly neglected, but we expect to transition the brandstorming name to something more relevant to business owners very soon.
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