I was reading Peter Kim’s wiki of social media marketing examples which I highly recommend, and thought that I’d follow that up with the following short post about the types of questions and comments you might be getting from business owners about social media. This differs somewhat from say Chris Brogan’s post about selling it internally to your boss-but the questions and comments might be very similar.

Are you having conversations like this? I’ve had these type of questions thrown at me over the course of the last few weeks and months. If you are not getting these type of questions, then maybe you should get out there more. But the flip side is this: You better be prepared to answer them.

1. How much is it gonna cost?
2. But first tell me what exactly it is?
3. Is it like Facebook or Myspace? Because that’s all I really know.
4. Twitter? I’ve heard about it, but I’m not really sure what that is.
5. A blog? I don’t see what I blog is going to do for my business, besides, I don’t have time nor the desire to write one.
6. So you’re going to “show me” how social media is going to drive business? Ok…(proceeds to wait)
7. Who else is using it?
8. Are there any companies like mine that are using it?
9. So can you guarantee this?
10. Who’s going to do this? You? or us?
11. How long is this going to take?
12. I still don’t understand but I’ll take your word for it.
13. Can you get our website ranked higher in Google?
14. Will I make money?
15. Will I save money?

Interestingly enough, even the ones that do “get it” will still ask a lot of these questions.  You see, the issue is that social media and all it’s moving parts really involves putting a value on the engagement and then equating it to dollars earned or dollars saved. That’s what the business owner wants to see. We need to start putting what social media is and does into more equitable simplified terms that the public and small to medium sized business owners can understand, that they can wrap their arms around.  And if you are truly challenged, and you are “that person” that works for the small to medium sized business, then maybe you might want to check out this post by Mark Story, it may help. I know I get it, and maybe you do too, but can you articulate it?