I follow a lot of folks on Twitter who, like myself, are very active in the social media community. These people, again like me, are very passionate about the importance of social media in the business world and about how valuable of a tool it can be to promote your business. Unfortunately, many of them seem to fall flat on their face when it comes to coming up with a valid justification as to why a business needs to be involved in social media. In fact, they very frequently tend to take offense at the very nature of the question. Which is, of course, a sure fire way to guarantee that the business you’re trying to convince to get into social media never well.
Return On Investment, kids. It’s not a dirty word. Get over it. The whole nature of taking offense at the idea of justifying why a business should spend money on your idea without being able to quantify where it will turn into profits for them is absurd. It is tantamount to an artist claiming that people “just don’t get” their work. It’s a cop out. Sure, it’s all fine and dandy that you might be doing something unique and awesome in your mind, but if you can’t prove to someone that giving you money for doing so is worth their time you have no business trying.