In 1994 Dr. Ian Morrison of the Institute of the Future said, “By the year 2000, 98 percent of businesses will be on the Internet but only 5 percent will know why.” We can paraphrase his prediction for social media. A Twitter article by Shea Bennett brought some interesting statistics to light:

  • On average, companies only respond to 30 percent of feedback received from their social media sites (that means 70 percent of feedback is ignored)
  • 56 percent of all customer tweets to businesses are ignored
  • Only 44 percent of customer question tweets are answered within 24 hours
  • Only 25 percent of businesses include any call-to-action in their postings
  • 39 percent of companies do not track social media responses at all.

Based on that data, a lot of companies may have a social media presence, but they don't understand why or how to use it.

Growing up in the car-crazed '50s and '60s, I heard that an auto mechanic was only as good as his tools. A Snap-On tool vendor must have started that saying because my father, who ran the back end of a large Ford dealership, had a slightly different take. He said that a mechanic was only as good as his mastery of the tools that he owned.

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