If social media told you to jump off a bridge would you?

One of my favorite books of all time is 'Yes Man', which to cut a long story short, sees a man change his life by saying yes to every opportunity he's presented with. I've often thought it'd be brilliant for a business to try the same tactic, throwing caution to the wind and saying yes to every supplier email, every contract opportunity and every conference invitation. In that scenario though, something would confuse the hell out of the participating business...What to do with social media?

I imagine every second an article is posted onto the world wide web telling businesses to get on social media and embrace the new inbound marketing strategy. I'd also put a bet on that every other second, an article will be posted telling businesses to stay the hell away from social media, or at best, loosely incorporate it into their marketing strategy without giving it too much focus. I was invited to a webinar this week called 'social media is BS' for example...Enough said.

So our 'yes business' would be left caught between a rock and a hard place. Is it good, or is it bad? Still not enough people are seeing the listening potential of social media and are concentrating solely on the broadcasting element. And with that, people are ignoring the fact that social media is not the only thing on the Internet that a business can exploit.

From a listening point of view, local papers, journals and online magazines are all so much more useful than they could possibly have been in print. These news feeds are updating more often and providing links to crucial people and crucial opportunities that weren't physically accessible a few years ago. These valuable sources, and the huge improvement in their value seems to have been largely swept under the carpet when it comes to online. The buzz words are 'social' and 'mobile' and the rest seems heavily glossed over.

Yes, social media should play a part in business strategy; it's available and useful; so why wouldn't you use it? But don't forget there is so much more out there for a business to utilize. You don't have to be broadcasting yourself on Facebook or Twitter to be gaining opportunities and prospects. In fact, more excitingly you can be finding them, rather than waiting for them to come to you. And you can learn more about your prospects than ever before meaning it won't be your business saying yes to everything, it'll be your buyers.