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In recent surveys it was found that around 95% of banks have no intention of getting involved in social media at any point in the foreseeable future. Those which are now currently involved with sites like Facebook are clearly not providing anything more than a means for their customers to interface with them, praise good service, criticise the bad and ask questions of a general nature.

Other business reports suggest that only 3% of online traffic is driven toward a company’s website thanks to social media, the point being that they would have already known about the company in order to become online friends. Maybe there’s not that much point getting involved after all?

Perhaps efficacy isn’t the point though. On the face of it social media platforms are a free and convenient if passive marketing tool. It takes time and effort to maintain your social media presence if you’re really going to keep up with your customer relationship management commitments but it’s an industry expectation of any up-to-date company, corporation or third sector organisation to have a Facebook and Twitter account. People might have a grievance or a comment of praise to make but they want to do it publicly because that’s what the internet has taught us to expect. Some people feel that if they complain in an email it will be ignored, if they can post the same on your wall it shows to all that you are listening. If you can then deal with their complaint and tell your client base what you have done you have proved that you are responsive to your clients’ needs ant that you’ll do what needs to be dome to help. You’ve turned a customer complaint into positive PR.

Fran Meggs, MD of Enbu Consulting says: “First of all, a lot of people may have liked not to opt to get involved in it, but the reality is that they don’t have a choice anymore. I think social media has developed at such a level that you can’t really ignore it.”

While they won’t miss out on a great deal of business or actual marketing and promotion but they will miss the basic expectations of the net savvy, so, while Facebook isn’t a search engine per se if people look you up on Facebook and don’t find you then they may perceive that you’re not up top the speed of the game.

There are other aspects to following your business partners and competition on Facebook, linkedin and Twitter than showing an up-to-date face to your client base. It allows you to keep all of your contacts in one place on a more casual basis than your email address book and it also keeps you updated on what’s trending in your sector. Another is that it allows users to bypass gatekeepers when they want to contact potential partners, instead of dealing with PAs and receptionists it’s possible to go straight to the person in question directly.

Given that it’s ostensibly free and rapidly becoming the industry standard it makes perfect sense to get involved, however, dipping a toe into the waters doesn’t make you a part of the social media wave any more than making a bologna sandwich makes you a cordon bleu chef; it takes a lot of hard work, practice, trial and error to really be able to call yourself a Social Media manager.

Dan Cash is an SEO and copywriter. He relies on mobility cars supplied by motability when not working from home.