You’ve heard of the digital divide – the clever phrase concocted to describe the skill and learning gap between the computer haves and have nots. It’s the gap between those families that have more computers than headcount and those who still think PCs are the sole domain of nerdy propeller heads.
Luckily that divide is closing as computers drop in price and governments work hard to ensure accessibility increases.
But the latest wave of online collaboration and communication, social networking, has uncovered a second digital divide.
But this time the gap is not at home or school but at the workplace.
And this time it’s not due to money and attitude, but time itself – time to learn about the phenomenon, perfect it and most importantly of all, maintain it.
Because the last thing business operators need in these lean economic times is yet another distraction to take them away from either completing existing work or generating new work.
The truth is that most smaller business operators – particularly in the services sector – need to maximise their chargeable revenue, because if they don’t work (and charge for it) they simply don’t get paid.
So their day is concerned with squeezing as many chargeable minutes out of the day as is humanly possible, or getting out another quotation to bring in the next piece of business, before their competitor gets it or the customer changes their mind.
This pressure cooker environment is challenging enough in a buoyant economy, let alone one where new business is hard to come by.
The same theory applies to any business where output is a direct result of time allocated to production.
Any distraction from the production process is simply a threat to revenue.
Yes I hear the cries of all of you SN devotees – social networking is part of your promotional mix and hence leads to increased new business.
That may well be true for many.
However, what is not so obvious is that an enormous percentage of smaller business have their promotional strategy on ‘set and forget’.
Be it their website, Adwords, Yellow Pages or traditional advertising, many smaller business operators simply allocate time to establishing their promotions for the month, quarter or year, then let it do its stuff so that they can go back to completing as much chargeable work as possible.
I am constantly approached by exasperated smaller business operators who are just as willing to adopt new marketing techniques as the next guy.
But to a man and woman, they each have one thing in common – they simply don’t have time to bone up on the new medium and learn how to master it.
What’s worse, no sooner than they feel they have got on top of a social networking tool than another emerges to suddenly make them redundant all over again.
No wonder eyeballs roll as soon as they hear of the latest social networking fad and how it’s taken their markets by storm.
So what should they do?
Should they continue to work as they have for decades and simply write off social networking as something that their kids do instead of their homework?
Or should they try and find some more time in their already stretched schedules to get on top of this strange but pervasive beast?
The answer is very much ‘it depends’.
As outlined here a few weeks back, ignorance of social networking is not an option because as soon as you ignore it, an unsuspecting customer review will come along and bite you on your reputation.
But equally, the time taken to learn and master it is time taken away from completing or securing work.
Really the answer lies in how much of your market is adopting it.
For example, if you are selling tractors to farmers, you probably have less reason for concern than say those selling a new movie to consumers – many of whom will pick up on the amazing word of mouth that tools like Twitter create.
On the other hand, a farmer (and farmers are likely to be more computer literate than you might imagine) may well look for reviews of the tractor, or log in to a forum of his and her peers for more information.
Or selling equipment to tradies. Given they are onsite without time to attend computers or mobiles it is unlikely that many tradies ‘Tweet’. But on the other hand they too may join forums or visit blogs after work.
One thing is for certain. To a very large proportion of business, social networking is a completely different beast than to those of us whose PCs are their primary business tool.
To this end we shouldn’t assume that every business operator is going to adopt the medium anywhere as readily as you or I.
Instead it’s a matter of staying in close touch with your customers. And if they are into social networking, its a pretty good cue for you to get into it as well.
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Craig Reardon is a leading eBusiness educator and founder and director of independent web services firm The E Team which provide the gamut of ‘pre-built’ website solutions, technologies and services to SMEs in Melbourne and beyond. www.theeteam.com.au
James was the editor and publisher of SmartCompany and LeadingCompany for five years. He is now the Australian Financial Review‘s companies & markets editor, and a former BRW editor.
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