Why? The most valuable word in social media

Don’t get me wrong. I can see the worth of social media sites, like Facebook and LinkedIn, as much as the next man. I get that you have to get involved or risk missing out. For example, when having lunch with a girlfriend last week I could sympathise with her situation: she was miffed at not knowing about another friend’s new baby born weeks earlier. My only advice was, you guessed it, ‘to get a Facebook account’. And the more advice like this that gets dished out, the more we feed the social-media fever. No bad thing perhaps, but it’s vital that all that advice remains connected to the need it’s given to address: that’s the ‘why’.

In my friend’s case, there was a community on Facebook that she wanted to be part of. Does your business know where its communities hang out? If that’s Facebook or LinkedIn or somewhere else, that’s where you need to play. It’s exactly the same consideration as choosing to visit a certain exhibition or advertise in a particular magazine: will people you want to influence see you there?