Sure, everyone is talking about social media and, chances are, you know at least one other person using it for their business. But that does not mean that social media is going to work for YOUR business. Here’s why.

The #1 reason why social media won’t work in some businesses has to do with the culture of that company. If a company has a top-level management structure that is resistant to change and completely focused on short-term profits and returns, social media will more than likely fail.

This is because social media is not about producing measurable results in a short period of time; it can often take over a year, because relationships must be developed, trust must be established, and you must manage your brand in the interactive space.

If your target market is over 50, social media probably won’t work out so well. I’m not saying you can’t try here, but email marketing may be as adventurous as you want to get for the moment.

Social media requires that a company be open and willing to change and adapt as the technology changes. Your strategy right now for the next year may need to be re-visited and altered after 4 months. This does not mean it was a bad strategy: it’s only a bad strategy if you let it become outdated. If you’re company is still completely reliant on having everything in paper, and does not do much work digitally, you may not want to make the investment in social media.

Another very important barrier to successful social media strategy, as B.L. Ochman over at Digital Daily points out, is money:

Building a site that incorporates interactivity, allows user-generated content, and perhaps also includes e-commerce doesn’t come cheap from anyone who knows what they are doing. Even taking free software like WordPress and making it function as an effective interactive site, incorporating e-commerce, creating style sheets that integrate with the company’s branding, takes more than time. That takes skill, experience, and money.

Once you’ve decided that you want to put yourself into a market that is big enough to be the fourth largest country in the world (as shown in the picture above), there are still things that can sink your campaign. Companies need to be committed to driving traffic to the site, fan pages, videos, and contests. This means that PR has to be at the center of any execution strategy.

With so many people telling you that social media is what you need, it’s important to know if that’s really true for your company.