enough with the "monetize social media in six months" garbage

Here's the deal: monetizing social media without a proper budget and really good content is ridiculous. We've had several clients ask us why they're not seeing massive results (if any) from their social media. The answer is simple: You're not tracking, you're not engaging potential customers, your content is weak, your ad budget is insufficient, you haven't given it any time, you hired a digital marketing agency that over-promised, you hired the right digital marketing agency but failed to provide anything of substance or unique about your business. 

Social media is the new tv and radio. Lot's of competition and crappy reach.

If you troll social media, you'll certainly see the numerous "ads" for generating leads, engagement, do-it-yourself nonsense that is just that; nonsense. 

There is no magic potion or company that can generate real leads automatically.  It takes KNOWING YOUR CUSTOMER. You can't do that through software. Period. And let's not forget that in order to monetize leads, someone has to follow up. Someone has to know where those leads are coming from, and someone needs to contact the person that asked for information. But ANYONE can respond and troll your social pages. Yes, there are plenty of people out there that specifically look to mess with companies. 

It's pretty simple; social media is awesome for keeping your brand and your message in front of people. That alone should be enough to make sure it's good. But no. A company wants to make thousands a month off of a hundred dollar budget. Sorry folks, not gonna happen. Not unless you treat social media as you would any other form of mass media. The more people see your message, the more people are going to respond.   In order to keep that momentum going, a company had better post every day (mon-fri for b2b and 7daw for retail), better have unique content, better have an engaging message and better not be selling more than 30% of the time. 

Bottom line... INVEST in social media. Make sure that you hire a company that knows what it's doing. In-house people are too close to it. You NEED a digital marketing company to ensure that you're timing, your message, your art and your reach are being utilized the best they can be.