Why Should You Worry About Online, Social and Digital Marketing?

One of the biggest questions I have heard from a variety of businesses across a collection of industries, is “Why Does Online or Social Even Matter? My business has nothing to do with technology, online marketing or social media marketing, so really why does this even matter?”

It’s a valid question and the truth is, if you don’t build your online marketing, social marketing and email marketing to align with your business goals, then it really doesn’t. Before you would spend a large amount of money and time investing on a new piece of equipment for your business, you would know what that piece of equipment is going to do for you. Put it this way, if you run a hardware store you probably aren’t going to run out and spend money buying pillows. Now, if you had a strategy and plan about how you will sell those pillows as the start of a new home decor aisle, then that might be a good investment. That’s what matters most when starting to look at building an online or social presence, is having a plan that will make your time & choices a good investment. How do you get started with building that plan? Well, first up is educating yourself about what is out there.

For today, start with a high level overview of how online and social media has been evolving in the last few years. You don’t need to understand all of the concepts or know exactly how you would implement them for your business right away, just review the material and be aware of the growth. Erik Qualman author of Socialnomics has made a series of videos over the years that highlights the gains of what social media can do. I’ve embedded them below so you can view them in the order they were released to start to see the growth of technology and social media towards the impact of marketing for businesses, big or small.