My colleague James Barclay wrote a post earlier this year about Social Maturity, citing the graph pulled together by the team at Tribal Impact. He makes a very good point which I felt was worth expanding further: "Not everyone is going to become a social media influencer (which is good) but getting them out of inactive is key."

I thought it worthwhile to analyse why is this key: 

When you are digitally inactive, people do not think, "Person A is too busy but must be brilliant. They don’t think about you at all."  According to the research coming from CEB Gartner, CB Insights etc., this really is not a good thing (unless you’re a spy!). 

Having no digital presence excludes you from as much as 69% of the buying process which your customers are already progressing through without any help, useful guidance from you at all. 

So, when you are weighing up whether you have time to be active online or believe that you’re too busy, then look at it from this perspective.

1) If you aren’t online, you are missing a great way to influence those that are important to you. You need to be a ‘Participator’ at the very least to even cling on to the coat tails of your competitors. 

2) When you are online, you are not only going to be present, you can define the problems and issues which your customers are seeking to answer. Defining these in your own (more favourable) terms means you are infinitely better placed to answer them as well.