How to Become Richer Than Your Friend Who Tweets All Day

A look into how social media has and will continue to negatively affect most young entrepreneurs.

I'm always amazed that interns at my company can do so much with the web, but am even more amazed as to the limitations social media has put on young aspiring entrepreneurs and hindered the necessary fundamentals to start a business.

When Is and When Is Social Media Not Necessary for Young Entrepreneurs?

If you want to open a B2C (business to consumer) company, than, yes social media is necessary.

However, many B2C models don't work out. There is much more of a failure rate in B2C than for companies modeled on a B2B (business to business) model. The insanely heavy competition is only one of many reasons, but to each their own. In B2C, social media is necessary, since the "C" element is all on social media.

However, in B2B models, social media is not needed as much. What is the basis of my argument?

Decision makers of companies are on average much older than even I, thus they find FB confusing, frustrating, or consider it a kid's game because their teenage daughter plays with it on the car ride to school.

Therefore, no real decision maker has the time to go and look up your FB page. If it weren't for my writing, etc., I would not have learned social media either.

Plus, if you're selling to another business, know that use of social media is looked down upon or considered to be recreation in today's corporate culture.

As a whole, technology is specifically geared towards those who are the kids of decision makers so they can harass their parents to buy the product, hence the B2C appeal. Facebook ads are the new obnoxious Saturday morning breakfast cartoon commercials, grown up with the generation that used to pester its parents for the toys advertised during Nicktoons.

When you're in start-up mode, I recommend that you focus on your website rather than your Twitter profile or Facebook page. The VPs and higher don't care how cool a timeline is; they want results.

What are the Main Hindrances of Social Media on the Young Entrepreneur?

1) The Phone Also Makes Calls - Sales is essential to any healthy business. This means cold-calling until you get the corporate branding that leads your customers straight to you (it doesn't work the other way around).

The lack of socializatio
I've seen from younger people due to social media is not staggering because they can still speak, but the ability to persuade and sell comes from practice and most below a certain age don't have it. Until your brand is recognized to the point where the customer is beating down your door, you need to be chasing that individual.

Yes, social media is a good tool to find them, especially in B2C, but finding them takes simply a minute. Selling them and coming across in a professional manner is a whole different story.

The only way that people gave me a chance when starting my business is that I tracked them down, cold-called them and sold them. I was only able to sell them because they believed in me. The same method is so rarely used by intelligent people that young entrepreneurs have an even greater advantage over their peers tha
I did... if they are willing to deal with others.

2) "There" vs. "Their" vs. "?"

Social media's entire point is to connect people as quickly as possible and make it as seamless as possible for them to connect (the more connections = increased advertising accuracy). Therefore, you can have an hour-long conversation without writing a sentence longer than any in this article.

Short sentences in and of themselves are great. It's the shortened words common to social media that damage young aspiring entrepreneurs' credibility.

Writing skills are the foundation of effective marketing and those hanging out on FB and texting lack the ability, among other issues, to persuasively write which is necessary to start a company.

Next time you're on Facebook talking about how cool your business idea is, consider the following:

• Social media has become so popular with the masses because it created an atmosphere where people can connect, express feelings and thoughts, and make friends with fragments and smiley faces, thus decreasing writing and marketing skills.

• It's not too late, as I was no Hemingway out of college, but the sooner you learn how to write, the sooner your business will get better.