A lot of companies these days are hopping on the social media bandwagon with the mistaken notion that it’s free, quick & easy. Little do they realize being successful in social media requires a lot more resources, time & hard work than what the media portrays. There’s a lot more to being successful in social media than putting up a profile on every social media platform there is. Just because you built it, doesn’t mean “they will come”, far from it.

While it does make sense from a reputation monitoring standpoint to secure your brands identity on every social media platform out there before some “squatter” comes along and scoops up the account in hopes of reaping a huge financial reward, that doesn’t mean instant success. Just because you put that profile up there doesn’t mean it’s going to rank in the search engine results for a certain keyword or even your brand name, either. There are some few instances where just putting the profile up will garner a ranking, and sometimes in the top 10 (especially for non-competitive terms), but usually that’s fleeting, eventually that profile will settle out to much lower in the search engine rankings. Likewise, just because you put the profile up doesn’t mean you are going to automatically acquire 1,000 friends overnight, unless of course you are Oprah. Unfortunately for common folk and businesses it just doesn’t work that way, there’s a lot of hard work involved.

There’s a reason why the word “social” is put in front of media. Having a successful account or profile on any of these platforms requires you (the account holder) to be social. That means getting out there on that platform and having conversations with people, being honest and transparent about who you are and why you are there, promoting your profile on your blog or website to encourage interaction, interacting and sharing with people in that community and most of all listening. These actions are what will bring your profile the power to rank in results or become a power account on a social media site.

In this big internet world there are a lot of social media platforms out there and it certainly is time consuming to be social and active in every one. In fact trying to be active on every social media platform might just be a total waste of time and resources, something no company needs in today’s economic environment. This is where some of the hard work comes in. To get the most out of your efforts in social media and see more success, its wise to be most active where your audience is holding the conversation, not active in a “popular” platform. The key to this is actually knowing who your audience is and where they are holding a conversation. Some companies believe that their audience is the same both offline and online, but they shouldn’t assume. A lot of times companies can see a dramatic shift in audience demographics when switching communication mediums because of the way it is consumed. This is where a lot of research comes into play and strategies need to be planned – not easy work by any means.

So at the end of the day, don’t be lured in by the promise of quick, easy and cheap or that phrase from Field of Dreams – “If You Build It They Will Come“. When it comes to social media and being successful it takes a whole lot more than just slapping up a profile and saying “Hey I’m here!”, most of the time an audience will say “So what?! So am I!”. Remember the most important person in social media is the end user, to be successful in social media that means providing them something they feel is valuable – that even includes your profile on a social media platform.