Why We AREN’T On Social Media

At first blush it may seem like an odd choice for a digital marketing company to not have a presence on social media. After all, one of the biggest tenants of a digital marketing plan is a social media marketing strategy. It would make sense that one of our biggest channels for business would be on a platform like Facebook or Twitter, but it just isn’t.

There are a few reasons why we have made this decision as a business. I am going to detail each of them here and then would love to hear your feedback about the experience of your business.

Reason #1: In Search Of A Community

Being successful on any social media platform requires you to build a community. In most cases, it is not about the size of your community it is about the quality of it. There are businesses who have under 1,000 followers on Facebook who have developed a robust community of brand advocates that communicate through their Facebook page, but spread the company’s message on all platforms far and wide. A community should be vibrant and robust.

As you might imagine, building this type of community takes time and resources. In the current social media landscape building a community from scratch requires a financial investment or a heaping amount of luck. Once your community is built you must dedicate resources to maintain it. You can have 10,000 people in your community, but if none of them are engaging with you, what’s the point.

Our business is my wife and I and as you might imagine our resources are limited. Taking the time or spending the money to grow a community felt like a fools errand for us and so we decided to put our energies into developing this kind of vibrant community for our clients instead of our business.

Reason #2: A Financial Choice

When we were just starting our business 7 years ago, companies like Facebook and Instagram were just starting to figure out how to squeeze small businesses for as much money as they possibly could. They have developed this into a fine art these days. Getting off the ground on one of these platforms can cost you and if you don’t invest the money in kickstarting your page or your followers you will be left behind.

Did we want to put money into building a community that we would then have to maintain when our human resources were already stretched? Our decision was a tentative no.

It can be scary to make this decision because it can look from the outside to a potential client, with no context, that we don’t know what we are doing because we have no social media presence. In fact, we have had potential clients say to us, how come you don’t have a stronger presence on social media.

Reason #3: Where Is Our Customer?

When we first launched De Young Media in 2014 we did have a social media presence and a strategy to match it, but as the years went on, one thing was clear, people who are looking for digital marketing help were not searching on social media. People find us through word of mouth and referrals. We are often fielding phone calls that one of our clients had recommended us to a business owner.

Our customers may be ON social media, but they are not in search of our services on any of these platforms.

Deciding to abandon our social media strategy was a difficult decision to make. It was scary to take the leap of faith and to place our focus on other aspects of our digital marketing strategy. Five years removed from that decision it is the best decision we have ever made. It has allowed us to dig into other areas that grow our business without the financial and human resources commitment that comes with a robust social media presence.

This decision may not be right for all businesses. It is so critical to understand your clients and how they are finding you online. Your business may be one where clients come in exclusively off of a social media recommendation from a friend. Maybe your clients are only on Twitter and so a laser focus on that platform is in order.

Whenever you are making these decisions they should be driven by data and supported by business growth. If you haven’t touched your Instagram account for years and it is stagnant, it may be time to take the leap and leave your account for dead.

If you need help sorting through these decisions, we can help. Contact us for a discussion about what your business really needs as part of it’s digital marketing strategy.

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