Social Media: why bother?

There are many reasons why you should re-invent your business using Social Media, here are just a few...

• Tower Records and many others went bankrupt while others (iTunes) skyrocketed 
• learn from your employee (most Tower Record employee were under 20 and playing MP3)
• learn from your clients 
• Customer support (TurboTax) people are happy to show off their knowledge
• Self updating CRM
• Behavioral advertisement targeting (hypertargeting)
• show advertisement to "25 year old tech savvy male in Chicago" 
• Avoid expensive purchases when users can provide you with all needed data (crowdsoursing):
• Facebook language translation
• custom databases
• MyStarBucksIdea
• Recruiting
• Weak ties carry the most "social capital" due to lack of obligation of parties to engage 
• You can keep on posting "this" because I don't feel obligated to act
• Customer references, LinkedIn  recommendations and reviews
• sales and management team 

Every company from Sears down is getting "Community Manager" positions; within next 3 years, every company, big or small, will have to embrace the "Social Web" marketing tools or they will become irrelevant.