Posted by Sanjay Rana, Senior Digital Business Strategist, Draftfcb New York

This post started out as a simple mental exercise.  Given what I’m hearing from clients these days, would I ever recommend they avoid social media?  Can I make a credible case against participating in social media? 

First, some ground rules: when I’m talking about participating in social media in aggregate, rather than a specific site.  MySpace may not be appropriate for an office supplies company.  But, when you talk about social media as a whole, it becomes a bit harder.

So, I started thinking of situations where social media doesn’t make sense.  What if you’re in a specific niche business where your customers aren’t using social media channels.  What if you needed to guarantee ROI? 

But then it hit me.  Right now, social media is similar to the internet in the mid-90’s, when it just started gaining traction among the public. Sure, if you were a tech company, it was easy to argue for a website; after all, your target market was already surfing the Web.  But, for non-technology companies, the argument was a little harder.  It wasn’t clear if your customers were online yet.  What would you actually do online?  Who would be responsible for it?  It wasn’t cheap, and it wasn’t even clear if you could make money on this. 

Some companies decided to take the plunge, despite everything.  Others chose to wait.

Now, some ten years later, it’s pretty much impossible to be a major brand without some sort of web presence, and the term first-mover advantage is taught in college business classes across America.  And, most importantly, a lot of what actually happens online these days wasn’t even a twinkling in the eye of engineers ten years ago. 

I’m not saying that you need to do social media or else.  But, there is something to be said for experience – for being out there and learning, for actually participating.  As social media evolves, things will change, and what we will consider social media in 5 years probably doesn’t even exist today.  But, in 5 years, social media will be embedded in daily life, much like the internet in general is today.  You won’t have a choice but to participate.  And the thing is, those companies that dipped their toes in the water today will probably be in a better place culturally to deal with that social media of tomorrow. 

And so, we come back to my original question.  Is there a case against social media? It depends.  You could make a case that you don’t need to go all out with a Facebook page and a twitter feed and a blog and so on and so forth.  Your circumstances will dictate that.  But, I can’t, in good conscience tell you that you can avoid it all together.  You need to dip your toes in the water.  Even if, for now, that means listening to what people are saying about you and that’s it.  Sooner or later, you’re going to have to learn how to swim.  And it’s a lot easier to start in the kiddy pool then get thrown in the deep end.