15 reasons why companies may fear social media

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fear

Last night I was talking with Rachel Happe and Leigh Duncan-Durst on Twitter  and we were discussing  the following statement I made:

Some industries have built in fan bases and thus are naturals for social media implementation, so .. why the delay? Fear? Lack of expertise?

Fear of social media.  It’s more prevalent than you think. Sure some will say they are waiting for the true ROI to shake out. That might be true, but I doubt it’s the main reason.

Leigh brought up some great points:  “Is it Fear? Resources? Ignorance? Unwilling to be transparent?” She goes on to add without mentioning industries, “that some large orgs. are terrified of the VOLUME of feedback and detractors so much they can’t see upside.”

Can you imagine being so burdened with the fear of negative press or negative reaction, that you, as an organization, are paralyzed into doing nothing?

Leigh concludes: “They are just not comfortable with that level of transparency. Turning a  blind eye negates the opportunity to turn around negatives…Treat customers with respect, respond – and identifyadvocates too!

Rachel then adds: I think the biggest inhibitor of adoption of new tools is that people are overwhelmed and don’t have time to play with them. Sometimes I think you have to drag people into a room and make them play around with the tools until they are comfortable.

I couldn’t agree with them more!  So lets review this. Are these the things that are holding companies of all sizes back from utilizing social media?

  • Fear
  • Lack of experience
  • Ignorance
  • Waiting for ROI
  • Lack of Resources
  • Unwilling to be transparent
  • Lack of time
  • Confusion
  • No Money
  • Unawareness
  • No expertise
  • Lack of leadership
  • Terrified of feedback/truth
  • The “newness” of  it, going to wait.
  • High degree of skepticism

What else can we add to this list? How many of these are really legitimate?

2 thoughts on “15 reasons why companies may fear social media”

  1. Brilliant article!

    Succinct and to the point.

    I wrote a similar article last year. It touched on the point that big companies are scared to death of opening up; getting to know the truth about themselves and invariably seeing who their true customers really are.

    But what’s to be lost by opening up a little? Over inflated egos? Perhaps.

    But time will soon tell if missing this really good party was a ‘smart’ move on their part – for whatever reason.

    Celine 🙂

  2. I think a lot of companies fear the lack of control over social media. A small customer service slip could ‘go viral’ and have a damaging effect. However, if they were using social media correctly, they could display to their customers how they solved the problem and made the customer happy.

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