Most of us have had the painful, enlightening experience of smashing an appendage with a hammer. Many of us have reacted by expressing our frustration, some more creatively than others, at that tool. When that happens, the problem is that it isn’t the tool’s fault that we’re in pain, it’s our own lack of skill or care in using that tool that has caused the pain. Case in point:

Spike Jones (@spikejones) of Brains on Fire had quite a few interesting things to say after our roundtable discussion with Congressman Bob Inglis (@bobinglis) Tuesday. One of his comments was:

“But don’t you think there are instances where it just doesn’t make sense for a company to use Twitter? Like the local mortuary? Or maybe the port-o-potty delivery guys?”

In fact, I think that a port-a-potty company could benefit from social media IF they use it to find event planners and construction companies and make connections with them (whether its via Twitter or whatever). There are actually tons of event planners on Twitter. Businesses can really benefit from those connections if they approach it the right way. The key here is balance and moderation.

Social media can be useful to any company that approaches it with the right attitude, a solid plan, and an understanding of their customers. Twitter and Facebook are tools for building community. Community is what drives your customers. If you can capture and tap into this motivation you’ll never need to worry about meeting your revenue goals.

Community drives our decisions. Without community you have no measurement of wealth. Some people want to be wealthy; some want to be happy; some want to be healthy. All these people have one thing in common. They use their communities to reach their goal. When the port-a-potty company learns to use Twitter to tap into the event planner community, that’s when using social media truly makes sense!

I believe that any and every company can use Twitter and other social media. On the other hand, I agree with Spike, I don’t think that they should be using social media because someone forced them to do it. They should be very careful of social media and expect to smash a thumb or two in the process.

Ask about ROI if you’re considering hiring someone to help you with social media. If they don’t have a way to track it and set goals against it then they’re not who you want to use. We can talk about this wrench (social media) all day long, or we can get dirty and fix something with it.

Update: Olivier Blanchard (@thebrandbuilder) has a great post on the same subject also inspired by Spike’s post. (Warning, it’s a LOT longer than this post )

This is a post from the Nullvariable Web Consulting Blog.

Don’t Despise the Hammer