Is spending resources on social media a waste of time and money?

An article was published the other day that questioned how worthwhile it was for companies to spend money on social media , in light of a new report that discussed the predicted increase in social media spend in 2010. According to the article, companies have spent more time on social media this year than ever before and that more companies are focusing on this medium as a marketing strategy.  
This inherently means that companies are spending money directly or indirectly on social media. However, as is a familiar complaint, “fewer than a quarter of companies are able to see a ‘tangible’ return on their investments”. This trend is also seen at the same time as a slow down in the growth of the use of certain social sites, an example given being that “the number of users on Twitter has actually declined in the past three months, with a growth down by 8.1 per cent” .  

While the initial ‘hype’ might be decelerating, rather than slowly being abandoned, social media usage and social networking are now becoming familiar and standard ways for people and businesses to interact. Social media is used by companies for all manner of reasons and to meet numerous different business needs. As social media becomes more mainstream and familiar, it is down to businesses to become more efficient with how they use this medium. Now the hype is dying down, it is no longer an achievement to be implementing social media, businesses need to become more shrewd and sophisticated in their attempts. They are generally talking to a more tech-savvy audience than would be the national average, and social media is slowly beginning to lose its mystery to the masses. 

If there is a sufficient business need, it is wise for companies to start investing in social media but with one condition; that it is planned. Planning of aims, and what constitutes success is essential. This means that ROI can be measured effectively, and the strategy can be refined further based on the results of this. This is more important now, than it has ever been; and in the future will surely sort the success stories from the failures.