If you run a business, you’ve no doubt been told that you need to be utilising social media, as “everyone is” and if you don’t, you’ll get left behind.

No doubt you’ve setup a Facebook page and a Twitter account (you may even have been persuaded to put a Google+ page together, following all the hype about its value for businesses over the last couple of years), and have waited for the customers to roll in.

And waited. And waited…

An interesting article on SiteProNews – http://www.sitepronews.com/2014/10/17/email-vs-social-media-marketing-facts-2/ – raises the same point, then goes on to suggest that email marketing is “where it’s at” in terms of promoting your business.

Certainly, there is far more value to a business in having a quality email list of potential clients than having a few hundred (or even thousand) Facebook Likes and Twitter Followers; for the simple reason that the key word in the description “social media” is the word “social”. ie people use Facebook to learn what their friends are up to and find out which Game of Thrones character they would be if they’d been born in Belgium (or something).

Similarly, Twitter is a means for making short observations about news stories and finding out about cool websites that your favourite member of One Direction has visited in the last few minutes.

So is there really a place for business in social media? If you’re like 90% of businesses, you’re almost certainly wondering what all the fuss is about. However, when done the right way, social media can be a great means of targeting prospective customers who you would never have been able to reach any other way.

Essentially, it’s a stepping stone to getting people to visit your website, then putting them into your normal sales process as you would do with anyone who makes an enquiry. There is an added bonus, too, in that Google is keen on sites having links from other sites, and social media provides a great medium for you to promote your website – thus acquiring links from bloggers etc over time. (Links directly from Facebook are not of any value for search ranking purposes – though Twitter links can be of some value in this regard).

So you should certainly include social media as part of your online marketing mix, but you need to play to its strengths – eg immediacy, shareability – rather than expecting it to provide a constant stream of new business through regurgitating the same old boring corporate rubbish that people have come to Facebook and Twitter to avoid.