[TheCapeGreek]

I agree largely with all of the posts here, but the nagging concern in the back of my mind is always: isn't social media still valuable for businesses? Or rather, are you leaving customers "on the table" by ignoring it?

Maybe less so for B2B or "serious" things like WSJ, but for B2C it still sounds like a serious contender. For your dropshipping doohickies or crafted niche fandom doodads, where else do you go? Etsy and Pinterest aren't the norm everywhere. Then there's always the hope of "building a following" around either yourself or your product, or perhaps hitting a viral moment ("use this app to help you ABC 2x faster" by some influencer). Does one just SEO their way around and hope someone with a following gives you a boost or asks for an affiliate program?

[riffraff]

I have not read the article but it is my understanding that reach in classic social medias s (Fb, Instagram, Twitter) has become incredibly bad.

E.g. a post on Instagram would previously reach 40% of your followers and is now closer to 5%. So the value for a business also went down dramatically.

You might as well just invest in advertisement rather than a social presence beyond the minimum.

[SamoyedFurFluff]

A big problem is that the social media platforms are incentivized to try and keep people on the platform, aka away from external sites where you can sell your services. So your links to where to sell your stuff or whatever is not promoted

[infecto]

Is a possible other problem that everyone created social media with incredibly diluted messaging. Every brand had to post multiple times a day for things that seemed pretty worthless.

[TheCapeGreek]

Downvotes for a genuine question? Are we only supposed to say "social media bad"? Come on.