In this great snippet from Louis Gray’s 10 Predictions for 2010 (he does them annually) he says we’ll see a lot of mediocre “agencies” launched in 2010.
8. Many Social Media Experts Will Launch Mediocre AgenciesMany of the self-proclaimed social media experts will leave their corporate day jobs and strike it out on their own, looking to convert the world to Twitter and Facebook fan pages. A good number of them will find that the world of business relies a lot more on revenue than it does on retweets and @replies, and may walk away disappointed.
via 10 Predictions for 2010 In the World of Tech – blog.louisgray.com
While that’s a probable outcome there’s something else he says in there that I think is more important…
A good number of them will find that the world of business relies a lot more on revenue than it does on retweets and @replies…
People often lose site of revenues, conversions, and goals when they get lost in the vacuum of followers, retweets, fans, and visitors. A couple days ago John Jantsch posed the question “Is Social Media Killing Your Business?” where he observes many small businesses are spending far too much time in the social media pool and not enough on the bottom line.
Are you putting more effort into re-tweets than sales?

ROI of Social Media = Sales. Who woulda thought?
If your social media strategy is about getting more followers or re-tweets you are going about it all wrong. You should be focused on your goals – sales, conversions, leads, etc. Social media is a tool – not a web strategy. Don’t lose sight on what’s important in your business – making money.
Do you think businesses are losing sight of what’s important? Let us know in the comments or jump into the forums!
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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Very right & it’s about time this sound resonates more strongly in the ever-growing crowd of social media ‘experts’, Twitter adepts and the like who sometimes indeed prefer to think in terms of # of RTs, followers etc as a measure of their business success. Look forward to your comments & insights on blog http://bit.ly/18mhEL as well
Ok, so if swimming in the pool is FUN and not ROI, maybe its because the bait isnt good. You can’t catch anything with a lousy pitch and mediocre product.
I can certainly attest to the challenge of being drawn to spending a lot of time (un-billable hours) away from my bread-and-butter work with all these new tools. My challenge for the New Year is to find the balance between moving my business in a new direction but in a methodical and controlled way. This means being disciplined with my time.
Great post.
It is a tough challenge I think many of us will face in 2010…
If you have well defined goals your efforts do become measureable and you can start to find some ROI. A problem many face is not having a goal oriented social media strategy – and you can become lost in the vacuum.
If you figure out q good balance please let us know!
Thanks for stopping by!