As Dave mentioned in his last post, we have made a concerted effort to focus on
social media over the last month.  As
you might suspect, much of what we write in WorkPuzzle is based on the questions
and concerns that we have heard our clients express.  

But occasionally, we focus on topics that are probably of
more interest to us than some of individuals who regularly read
WorkPuzzle.  If you’re in that second
group, thank you for indulging us for the last few weeks as we’ve explored social
media topics.

Of course, this begs the question—if you’re not interested
in social media topics, should you be more concerned about these issues?  More specifically, are you putting your
business at risk by failing to understand and engage this new technology?

Until recently, the argument could be made that social media was primarily a personal issue.  Not using social media
was similar to not knowing who the finalists were in this season’s American
Idol.  People may have looked at you a
little strange, but it didn’t hurt your business.

At the same time, the only
businesses that were taking advantage of social media seemed to be large
companies with prominent consumer facing brands.  It was appropriate to rationalize that your
business was not Budweiser—you don’t run Super Bowl ads and you don’t
participate in business-related social media. 
It only made sense to focus marketing effort and budget elsewhere.

Is it reasonable to stay this course, or (as we’ve argued in
the past few weeks) are there some fundamental changes taking place around this
technology that could start to affect your business?

To find an answer to the question, it may be helpful to
look beyond the real estate industry and consider what’s going on among a
broader group of small and medium size businesses. 

If you think about
it, the typical real estate office operates as a small business.  In turn, many of the marketing techniques
that make a local small business service-provider successful would be applicable in a real estate office as well.

Hollis Thomases, a columnist for Inc. Magazine, just reported on several recent research projects involving small businesses and
social media.  I think the findings will
surprise you:

"It was only about a year ago that a Hiscox study found only
12% of small business owners 'described social media promotion as a must
and nearly 50% weren't using social media at all.'

Oh, how times change.

A newly released study by Vocus now finds that for 77% of
small and medium-size businesses (or SMBs), social media accounts for 25% or
more of total marketing efforts.”

Let those percentages soak in a little bit.  The study highlights a significant turn of events.  

Here are some more data points:

“The Vocus study also found that 84% of SMBs plan to increase their spend on social media, mainly because 78% said social media 'has helped a great deal.'

In addition to investing more in social media, future plans include using more social media sites, sharing more, engaging more, hiring more help and spending more time on and in social media.”

When things change this quickly (remember these two studies were only one year apart), it is difficult to know how to react.  As I mentioned before, don't beat yourself up for not being on top of this six months ago!

But on the other hand, it would be a mistake to ignore this type of quickly mounting research data.  It may be time for you to develop and implement a social media strategy of your own.

Editor's Note: This article was written by Ben Hess. Ben is the Founding Partner and Managing Director of Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle. Comments or questions are welcome. If you're an email subscriber, reply to this WorkPuzzle email. If you read the blog directly from the web, you can click the "comments" link below.