In your list of online priorities, your site is first, your blog is second, and social media is third. IMHO, social media isn't something you think about until you're up-to-date on your site and blog. Why put your site and blog before social media? First of all, you don't want to get people excited about and interested in your brand through social media, just to disappoint them once they get to your site. Second, social media will not provide your customers with the dialogue, information and SEO value that blogging will. Social media is a great way to continue the conversation, or expand the conversation. But the central hub of the conversation needs to be your blog. In addition, you'll get more ROI on a blog than you will on a Facebook page or twitter account.
Paul Gillin over at B to B online has a great article on When to Avoid Social Media.
Since Triad Web Design caters to small, local businesses, I'll summarize the three situations that might apply to them. Say you're the marketing person for a small business and you'd like to get into social media, but you can't get your boss on board. Abandon ship. If you can't get your boss to buy in, the effort is doomed to failure.
If you're interested in social media because it seems like the "thing to do," but you don't have any clear goals about what you'd like your efforts to accomplish, hold off until you have a concrete plan. You don't want to have conflicting, inane messages about your business floating around the Web. In addition, when you get busy and the campaigns aren't seeing any results, they'll be shuttered and you'll have wasted your time.
There are some businesses, such as health-care companies, where you have to be cautious about what you say. If you have to run every tweet by legal, it's not going to be worth the expense.
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