Wow! Uh Oh.

If you’re a marketer you have to be watching the recent moves of social media darlings Twitter and Facebook with equal thoughts of “Wow” and “Uh oh”. First the “Wow”. Twitter and Facebook have made interesting moves of late. Twitter with Promoted Tweets and Facebook via Open Graph. These initiatives are bound to affect online advertising as over 500 million users will see more promotion on their favorite platforms. Wow.

Note: My position for sometime has been that each of these platforms is relevant to your search advertising objectives NOW even if you don’t have an appreciation for the Participation Age itself. Both Twitter and Facebook matter because tweets and posts have emerged as a high worth element in Google’s search algorithm.

And now, each player has amped up its own ability to compete for ad dollars. This brings me to the “Uh oh”.

“Uh oh” if you’re a business that has yet to seriously explore social media as a touch-point for interaction with your prospects and customers. The longer you stay away from social media, the further behind you will be in attracting prospects, cultivating relationships, and accumulating customers through fans (likers) and followers. And if like me you believe that selling in the Participation Age is more farming than hunting -- you can’t afford to remain disconnected from the digitized form of word of mouth that the rest of us know as tweets and posts. Not even for one more day.

I'm not saying you can't run a successful business without social media participation, but it’s not going away. There are more applications, strategies, and opportunities being built upon it. You can’t afford to ignore it. "Uh oh" is not a strategy.

Talk to me www.twitter.com/timbigfish