The excuses, of course, come plentiful. You don't have time to "tweet" or update Facebook. You aren't convinced your private information won't be compromised or phished. You get enough spam as it is through your regular Web site, so why compound the problem via fake Twitter accounts bothering you every two minutes? Whatever your reason for resisting the use of social media in your online marketing strategy, know that the importance of associating your brand to a profile outweighs all the cons.

Sociability Means Visibility

How would you like it if somebody were to walk into a restaurant or store claiming to be you, and proceed to create havoc - overturning displays, dining and dashing, and just being a plain nuisance. People will remember the face of the troublemaker, but more importantly they'll remember the name since they'll be giving it to the cops! You wouldn't want an unauthorized person misrepresenting you in real life, so why have somebody do it online?

The more you resist setting up social accounts for your business, the more time you allow people to use the names in your brand. If you operate a company in Virginia with a fairly common name, like Acme, Inc., there's a change a California company with the same name might come along and take the vanity urls you could use to promote your goods and services. As people search, they could come to think "they" are "you," and you could lose business. Even if you don't plan to put too much into online socializing, you should at least establish your brand on these sites so it's clear you are up to date on social networking. Set up each profile to link back to your official site, and include links to the networks on your site to verify the branding.

Connect Your Networks, Cut the Work

The prospect of having to log into every single social network to make updates seems daunting, especially if you are a small company lacking the extra staff to handle online marketing. Luckily, many social networks offer integration with each other to allow for streamlined updating. You can post to Twitter and the updates will appear on Facebook and MySpace, or you can maintain a bookmarking site like Digg to one-click share on other networks. Applying RSS functionality available on these profiles lets you add the information to your main site, and constantly offer fresh info to visitors.

If you think social media is a waste of time, consider what you stand to lose if you ignore it. Establish your brand across the networks, and build a new following.