Last week on The Office, corporate weenie Ryan visited the Scranton branch and told them that they needed to make up extra sales that their website should have brought in. He had been fervently pushing the website onto the staff, telling them that version 2.0 of the site will be even bigger and better, and that embracing new technology like online sales will skyrocket paper purchases and make their jobs easier. Unfortunately, the staff had been deeply rooted in the "old school" method of providing a great customer service experience and developing a relationship with the customer. Ryan, however, was intent on this push towards web 2.0, insisting that Dunder Mifflin's social networking feature will bring loads of young, hip people on their site to interact and hang out with each other (never mind the whole sexual predator snafu they ran into...).

I bring up this lengthy example (see the episode here if you haven't already) because the timing of the episode was pretty spot-on. Last week I spoke at the eCommerce Summit in New Orleans (I'll be sure to post about that later this week), and Brian Smith from ComparisonEngines.com was on the New Media Panel with me. After I gave an overview of social media and its benefits, he came to the podium and asked the single most important question every business should ask themselves before diving into the sordid world of upvotes, stumbles, tweets, pownces, and photo streams: "Do you need to do this right now?"

Brian went on to say that too often, businesses dive into the new web big buzz thing because they feel that they need to keep up with the latest trends on the web. However, is social media truly your top priority now? I met a lot of eBay sellers and small business owners at the eCommerce Summit, and they often either worked for themselves or were part of an extremely small team. These people barely have time to SEO their site, and yet they're asking about which social media sites they should join and if they can create the same profile for each site.

Going back to The Office and last week's episode, if you watch the show or are remotely familiar with it, you'd clearly know that making a fancy website and offering a super cool social networking feature shouldn't be Dunder Mifflin's top priority. More specifically, what will a social networking section accomplish for them? Do teenagers and young hipsters order bulk reams of paper? Too often people think "I need to do that!" without first asking themselves whether they need it at all.

Both Brian and The Office taught me (in both a pointed and comical way) that before diving into something as time-consuming as social media, you need to ask yourself the following questions:

1. Is this a top priority, or are there other, more important things I need to take care of first? (There's no point in having 30 social media profiles if they point to an ugly, poorly SEO'd, horribly converting website.)
2. Is social media appropriate for your business?
   
3. What goals are you trying to accomplish by engaging in social media marketing?

Once you tackle those questions and feel that SMM is right for you, then you can start implementing a strategy. If not, well, you can always take a trip to Dwight Schrute's beet farm and figure out what your website does need.