At the Marketing Summit last Thursday, social media came up, as it often does. Here’s my take on the role social media plays in your revenue growth: its impact on your earnings is basically zero. That is, if you’re a business-to-business concern, your activity on Facebook or Twitter will probably not generate new revenue for you.

It might, once or twice, randomly, generate some revenue, but we don’t create strategy around exceptions. The problem with social media is that anyone doing serious business with corporate buyers won’t have prospects looking for them on social media!

I’m not saying you shouldn’t be on Facebook or Twitter. Be there. It may drive awareness. It may get people over to your Web site.  Do your thing on social media, but understand that it’s no place to invest  meaningful time or money. Because friends and followers don’t matter — only revenue does. And the former makes not more of the latter.

Next Week: Instead of investing in platforms where hundreds of millions of people are shouting at each other at equal volume, if revenue is the goal, we must create our own social media made up only of people who can buy from us! I’ll discuss the tools and platforms to do so next week.

This piece ran in my Evangelist Marketing Minute short-form newsletter, which you can receive every Monday morning for free by signing up here.