Using social media without plan ‘a waste of time’

The vast majority of companies are wasting time and effort when they make the foray into social media as they have no plan in place, according to Niall Devitt from the Ahain Group.

Taking part in a panel debate, at the it@Cork European Tech Summit, on the disruptive nature of social media, Mr Devitt said that most Irish companies are seeing no return on their investment of time into promoting their business online.

Mr Devitt said: “The majority of business both in Ireland and internationally right now are not getting ROI (return on investment) and that is the reality. While social media and online are very fashionable, companies are either not getting ROI or in a lot of cases are not measuring to know whether they are getting ROI or not.”

He said that their has to be a more bottom-line approach to the use of social media.

He said companies that are not using business indicators to chart the return that they were getting from social media are pointlessly incurring a cost.

“Goals for your digital strategy need to be [based on] traditional business KPIs (key performance indicators). If your goal is to grow your Facebook fanbase to 20,000 fans, you are not actually implementing a social media strategy. You could end up with 20,000 fans that don’t convert into customers and that is a cost to your business,” he said.

Mr Devitt said that the majority of companies were jumping in to the

online sphere just to see what would happen and they get very little return he said.

CEO of Newsweaver Andrew O’Shaughnessy said that to successfully roll out a social media strategy requires a lot of resources in order to see any return

“It is a process rather than a project the thought of OK we’ll concentrate on social media in Q4 that doesn’t work it is a real commitment to the long term this is a new world this is how it is happening now and we have to get with this and that requires a lot of resources,” he said.