If you’re laughing at Wetherspoons for dumping social, laugh at Apple too

What do Wetherspoons and Apple have in common? They’ve both shunned social media. Before chastising Wetherspoons for dumping its social media accounts, it time to think sensibly about what’s right for your business.

Are Wetherspoons AND Apple social media luddites? 

Many media experts are smugly overjoyed about Wetherspoons’ decisions to shut its social media accounts. “Luddites! They don’t know how to do social media properly so they’ve ditched it instead. What a dinosaur business that is!”.

Well, if Wetherspoons are luddites, so is Apple. It’s universally understood that Apple is at the vanguard of technology and communication. Yet, it’s never had either a Facebook or Twitter presence. It does have an Instagram presence but it follows five accounts, so it is very much a one-way communication channel. 

Why doesn’t the technology behemoth Apple partake in social media? Because it has calculated the ratio of effort vs output for managing social media and it doesn’t work. Apple prefers to control its image by using its own platforms and website to drive the agenda, rather than partaking in the melee that is social media.

Wetherspoons has taken a similar stance. Chairman Tim Martin believes that managing social media takes too much time and has very little positive impact. In fact, he’s on the record as stating that: "I don't believe that closing these accounts will affect our business whatsoever.”

Are Apple and Wetherspoons the smartest people in the room?
Apple and Wetherspoons ARE smart. Not because they’ve sidestepped social media. That may or may not be smart. No, they are smart because they have bucked the trend and made a BUSINESS DECISION concerning social media which they feel rightly or wrongly, is the correct one for them.  They have made this decision by weighing up the variables and made a decision according to their findings.

Most businesses don’t make a calculated decision about social media. Most use it because they feel they have to. Many put a lot of effort in and get little or nothing in return. Or they shun social media because they ‘tried it’ and it did nothing so they’ve abandoned it.

As I explain in this blog, Have you found the Social Media Magic Setting that lets your online business soar, neither approach is correct. The first and only way to establish whether social media is worthwhile is to do it correctly. Once you’ve ‘done’ it the right way, you can then begin to test and measure. 

Just like any business decision or investment in time, you need to consider the ratio of time vs output. If social media genuinely does nothing for your business, you may only need to preserve your accounts to help validate who you are.

If you want to learn more about how (and if!) you should be using social media for business come to one of our ONLE Networking meetings. We offer training at each meeting and our members are given access to exclusive training materials. Our members want to use online marketing tools the right way, so if you feel the same way, join us.