“[B]y the time you realize you’re in trouble, it’s too late to save yourself. Unless you’re running scared all the time, you’re gone.” – Bill Gates

Realizing that you are replaceable is hard for individuals and organizations to come to terms with. Yet, the reality is that 99.9% of the time we are completely interchangeable. Accepting this is the first step to increasing your odds of success.

When businesses (industries) fail it’s because they ignored the fact they were replaceable. Newspapers are being decimated by the internet. The local bookstore is being replaced by Chapters. And, Chapters (and the local bookstore) is making way for Amazon.

Innovation means change, and people fear change. But, the fastest way to ensure your demise is to try to ignore innovation. Bill Gates once said, “People feared electricity when it was invented, didn’t they? People feared coal, they feared gas-powered engines… There will always be ignorance, and ignorance leads to fear.”

I heard a marketing colleague say to me the other day, “Isn’t Twitter over yet. I was hoping it would go away.”…

Post Script:

I love this comment from Kari, “Hmmm. Keep replacing yesterday-you with tomorrow-you. And keep making tomorrow-you smarter, more experienced, more connected, less mired. Tomorrow-you should make yesterday-you look stupid, which is a hard thing to do. Most of us don’t like looking stupid, even if it’s in-the-past-us. Twitter isn’t going away, thankfully.”

Buying advertising is technically easy. You pay for the space, submit your ad and – ideally – wait for your sales to roll in. Fire, forget and hopefully reap the benefits.

The big problem with advertising is that it’s getting more difficult by the second to be effective, and poster blindness is rampant making getting attention an almost an impossible, and increasingly more expensive, task.

On the flip side social media tools are generally easy to use, have very little direct cash costs and can be quite effective at reaching targeted audiences. However, leveraging social media is not necessarily the Utopian picture that many pundits try to paint.

First, using social media effectively is not a ‘fire and forget’ tactic(s). You can’t buy your way in. You can’t bribe the bouncer at the door. It’s a long-term venture that requires a deep organizational commitment to open two-way communications which is authentic and transparent (no small challenge to say the least). And, despite what some say, social media is not free. It’s a strategy that needs continuous input and monitoring – both of which cost time (equating to money).

At the very least, as a general rule of thumb, I would estimate that for each social media tool you are using it will take a minimum of a half hour of work each day. This should cover making quick updates, monitoring/reporting activity and responding to comments. So if your involved in Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn plan to spend roughly 1.5hrs. As well you should be spending at least a half hour each day monitoring (For a great read on building your own ‘listening post’ please visit this .eduGuru article: http://doteduguru.com/id3764-building-your-own-listening-post.html).

If you are also blogging, plan for about 1-2 hrs of time for every post. This should cover the writing, research and editing etc. So, for a blog that is updated daily you would be spending roughly 10 hours a week on your blog.

So, let’s add this up:

Social Networking: 1.5 hrs per day (3 tools) x $20/hr* = $30/day
Blogging: 2 hrs per day x $20/hr = $40/day
Monitoring: .5 hrs per day x $20/hr = $10/day
Total = $80/day
Monthly (x 30 days, as social media doesn’t follow the work day schedule) = $2400
*rate used for illustration purposes only

Finally, depending on the size/complexity of your organization you should account for time in building support for new tools. For a small business this time may be negligible, but for large organizations each new tool could require up to 50-60 hours in consultation time.

As you can see all of the ‘soft costs’ associated with social media can add up in a hurry. So, if you came to Facebook looking for silver bullet solutions then you may be better off just buying an advertisement.