It takes time and commitment to see results utilizing social media.

Healthcare marketers are jumping on the bandwagon. The social wagon. Everybody’s talking about it, everybody’s doing it.  It’s cool!  It’s hip!  If you’re not doing it, you’re not “with it”.  So more and more marketers are “giving it a try”.  And that can be the problem….”giving it a try.”

Some marketers are jumping in the social media arena and trying it to see if it works.  They commit resources to it for a period of time to see how effective it will be.  And if after a short experiment, results aren’t seen, they withdraw and declare it’s not effective. But social media is not like a sales promotion or a direct response ad.  Social media is just that.  It’s about being social and building relationships.

A personal relationship usually doesn’t happen overnight. It doesn’t grow and flourish in a short time span. It takes time to develop and mature. It takes an investment of time.  And strong relationships occur because there is a commitment over time. Even in the not so good times.

And the same is true for social media. It takes time. Social media is about building relationships, developing loyalty and being consistent. And that takes time. We cannot try it for 3 months and if we don’t get concrete results, then we abandon it. Just like a personal relationship.

Does social media have an ROI? It probably does. But it requires the “investment.” And anything worthwhile takes time. The most rewarding personal relationships are those that grow and mature over time. Those based on commitment, consistency and stick-to-itiveness.  Social relationships in business are no different.