Online Marketing: 7 Reasons You Don’t Need Social Media Networks

by Level343 Team on August 4, 2011

ANOTHER SOCIAL NETWORK?? Come on!!!

It seems like every time a new social media network pops up, a fresh spate of articles are sure to follow. These cookie cutter articles tout all the many wondrous, fantastic reasons you should hop on, jump in and climb on the bandwagon.

Well, we say “enough”! Social media has enough cheerleaders, pro-social arguments and lessons. It’s time somebody put their foot down, and brought up some points about why you don’t need social media.

It’s just another way to drive traffic.

Who needs direct traffic? All those people following Twitter and Facebook links… they’d just put wear and tear on your website. Plus, there’s article marketing, directory submissions and PPC to drive traffic to your site. Don’t be a sheep! You CAN get traffic without social media, networking or connecting!

You can’t handle the demand.

Can't keep up?

Who needs cheerleaders? This is an important point, because Twitter and Facebook have been proven to generate leads. What happens if you have a strong social media campaign? What if you get tons of leads? No… don’t worry about it. You have more work then you can handle! If you get on social networks, you may not be able to keep up with demand – and nobody wants that worry.

You can’t afford it.

Everybody talks about the “affordability” of social media, but success never comes cheap. Why, even if you have a social media marketing plan, it takes an hour maybe two every morning to implement. – And, if you want to use something like Hootsuite to track your social campaign, it’s a hefty $5.99 a month!

You don’t need feedback – your product and business is just fine, thank you.

No comment!

The last thing you need is to worry about how people view your products, services or business. So what if you can get instant feedback from social media networks? Who needs that headache? Nobody wants to hear about how their business, customer service, products or services can be improved. –And anyway, improvement is highly overrated. There’s something to be said for “old school”.

Your site is ranking on at least the third page of the SERPs.

Just because social marketing is an important signal to search engines doesn’t mean it has to be an important signal to you. You’re on the third page of the SERPs, at the very least, and, really, that number one spot isn’t that valuable. It only gains about 36% of the traffic for that search, right? Pfft – who needs it!

Relationships are for sissies.

When people talk about social, they talk about “building relationships”. Look, you own a business. You’re in the business of building that business, not making friends. As well, there’s all this “trust” stuff, which doesn’t make sense. Why have all those trusted signals, like the VeriSign logo, on your site if it wasn’t to build trust?

Don't need no stinking help

You don’t need more publicity.

Millions of people, nay, hundreds of millions of people, use social networks. That’s a lot of publicity you don’t need. You have a fantastic product, and word will get out on its own. Besides, how much can you say in 140 characters or less that you can’t say when someone asks you what you sell? Waste of time, really.

Conclusion

Ah… sarcasm. Ain’t it wonderful? For you regular readers, you know how much weight we put on social media and networking: a lot. Social media marketing is an inexpensive, relatively easy way to drive traffic to your site and gain leads.

You have lightening fast distribution, a large audience and a variety of networks to work with. On top of that, you also get a certain quality of traffic; readers are more likely to read all the way through (or a larger percent of the way through) an article given by someone they know. You can develop relationships, find cheerleaders, gain an edge on the ranking competition and much more.

The next time someone brings up social media networks and asks why they should use SMM, don’t forget the all-important rejoinder: Why not? Then, point them this way… we’ll get them started on the right path!

Level343 Team

This account is where everyone involved with Level343 content marketing efforts show up. You can say there is no "I" in this team. Sometimes we will chat about a certain topic with a variation of ideas, suggestions, even opinions. Then one of us will start writing the post, hand it over to someone else who will continue the diatribe. Eventually it ends up on our editors desk who either chops the hell out of it, or you're reading it right now.