Pierce Mattie Public Relations New York

According to a recent press release by Newtek Business Services, they tallied a poll of approximately 2,200 respondents in regards to their use and sentiment of social media to find that nearly 60% of independent business owners utilized social media tools in order to attract new customers and communicate with existing ones.

The results were not necessarily surprising to me, as they still showed almost an even split when it came to using social media and its effectiveness overall. However, I'd be curious to know that of the 45% of brands who didn't find social media a significant means of sales growth (55% said they did), exactly the way in which they were using these tools to communicate with their customers. One, because so many brands are afraid to ask for the sale to begin with (so simple conversation that dances around without being direct goes nowhere) and two, because often brands go to the other extreme of always giving it away (which results in the question, what reason are you giving them to buy if you've become a freebie brand?)

Case in point, this past July while speaking at Cosmoprof North America I had a bath and body brand approach me to get my opinion regarding their social media tactics. They first were very proud to tell me that they had 17K fans on Facebook and when I asked how that was working out for them (because I had a feeling it wasn't), they told me that they had not generated a single sale from their fan base. I asked them to tell me about their content generation, in which they told me that every.single.day they held a contest and gave away product.

Well, then. There's your answer.

They had a captive audience, but they weren't understanding how to effectively use Facebook to communicate with them...so in order to retain them, they simply gave their product away. I will say this time and time again, please don't measure your success in utilizing social media simply based on how many followers or fans you have. Base it on the conversions you can create, the brand loyalists you empower to tweet/share/like and so on, and your overall retention. Because who cares if you have 17K fans and NOTHING happens? I'd much rather have 1K fans where 30% are making regular purchases, sharing links to product with a friend, and making recommendations on both the fan page and actual product page.

I'd like to hear what you think. If 60% of brands are using social media for business...just how many are actually effective? Tweet us @PierceMattiePR.