Tales Of A Fourth Generation Textile Executive: Old School Vs. New School, To Social Media Or Not?

We have been having an old school/new school debate at the offices lately about the value of social media marketing. The thing is that we expend a lot of money to have employees and outside contractors manage all the social media activity that our companies present to the world. As you could imagine, my nearly 70 year old (shh!) father is of the old school thoughts. You guessed it, yours truly is of the new school opinion that social media activity is a fact of life and an important part of our business. Then there is the old argument, but “everyone else is doing it.”

For one thing, we did survive and flourish during all those years prior to social media going viral and gaining in popularity, but then again times they are a changin’. That is a point for my dad. We were definitely one of the later ones to catch on to the social media madness. But once again, this all begs the question, what would be more profitable for the company? Would we be better of saving the money on all the expenses related to social media and using some of that money for contests and free giveaways and such? Or, is social media really adding value to our company’s sales and helping to increase our goodwill? The same could be asked about advertising in different publications.

Unfortunately there is no right or wrong answer to this debate. I wish we had more hard facts to make a calculated decision. So what do you think? Are you buying fabric from any of the Jaftex Companies due to a blog you read, a Facebook picture you saw, a YouTube video we made, etc.? Without hearing from the people, it is really hard to evaluate this. Can you please comment on these questions to help us to decide what direction to go in with our social media. Don’t tell anyone, but I am confident we won’t be dropping social media, but I still want to hear what you think. Thanks.

Thanks so much,
Social Scott