Don’t Be Afraid to Wipe Out: Pros and Cons of Social Media for Businesses
October 9, 2025
Social media can grow your business faster than almost any other resource. Don’t avoid it! Your fear, confusion, or bad experiences might seem to justify a hands-off approach. But doing nothing outweighs the risk of trying.
Social media is like surfing on the ocean; there’s room for everyone! Take up your board, slip into place, paddle out strong, and wait for what comes. You get to decide whether to catch the wave or let it pass. It could be a gentle swell that carries you smoothly to the shore or a monstrous wall of water that demands every bit of strength you have. When you see an opportunity, take it!
If you’re a business owner, especially one who hasn’t fully dived into social media yet, this article is for you.
Here at JamboJon, we want to help you suit up and paddle out past the break. With a little trial and error, you can ride your marketing wave with confidence. Will you be the picture of perfection from the start? No. But social media isn’t going away. Yes, there are risks AND rewards that will take your business farther than you ever dreamed.
Riding the Wave: The Positives
Catch the right wave, and your heart pumps with pure exhilaration. Let’s look at what you gain when things go well using social media:
1. Reach and Visibility
It used to be that salesmen came to your neighborhood and knocked on one door after another. When you let them in your home, they’d open a briefcase filled with encyclopedias or pull out the most advanced vacuum cleaner. One on one, they demonstrated what it would be like to have their product in your home.
Social platforms let you broadcast to people you could never reach walking down your street. Through Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and LinkedIn, you have audiences in every state (and sometimes every country). A single post, with the right image or message, takes you from zero awareness to thousands of opened doors with people sharing, liking, and commenting.
2. Authentic Connection
Unlike traditional ads, social media allows you to show YOU: your brand voice, your personality, your behind-the-scenes. Famed chef, Julia Child, once flipped a potato pancake a little too enthusiastically in front of the camera. When it landed on the table, she picked it up and said, “Just scoop it back into the pan. Remember, you are alone in the kitchen and nobody can see you." Fans still remember this first “5-second rule” demonstration. Why? Because it was real. When you do social media well, your customers feel they know you. That authenticity builds trust, which converts into loyalty.
3. Real-Time Feedback and Learning
Crumbl Cookies created their original chocolate chip cookie based entirely on feedback. “They created two versions of a cookie changing one element at a time. Then, they went up to people in gas stations with two different cookies and asked about which one they liked better. And they made changes to their cookies based on people’s comments.” Five months (and many bad batches) later, they invented their famous pillowy-soft chocolate chip cookie.
Post something on social media. See what sticks. See what doesn’t. You can experiment and adjust. Because you haven’t invested in a static billboard or printed flyer, you can change it up each day. Pay attention to the comments and reactions. Look at the data and try again. It will take time, but the end product will be worth it!
4. Cost Efficiency (Potentially Huge Bang for a Few Bucks)
Did you know that in 2025, a 30-second Super Bowl ad cost $8 million dollars? Research shows that with that price tag, you buy the attention of over 100 million viewers in the US alone. If only we all had wallets that size!
There IS a way to get attention of many WITHOUT the massive budget. Social media offers lower entry cost compared to traditional media. Paid ads let you target your ideal audience. Organic content, when done well, can bring in ongoing returns without constant spend. For business owners with modest marketing budgets, it’s a no-brainer. If you have one post that gains traction, it can reach tens of thousands, if not millions of views.
The Wipeouts: Where Things Go Wrong
Surfing has painful wipeouts. When you push into social media without preparation or awareness, you can lose time, money, and energy, sometimes more than you expect.
1. Time Drain
As a business owner, you can spend endless hours creating content. As you plan upcoming posts, respond to comments, and analyze the data – it sucks your attention away from other responsibilities. Sadly, if your time for social media is sporadic or disorganized, those hours pile up with little return. You risk being busy rather than effective.
2. Money Lost on Poor Targeting or Strategy
The truth is, your product or service is not for everyone. When you don’t understand who your audience is, and run paid social media ads without well-defined goals, you’re taking an even greater risk of missing the mark. Guaranteed: Your ads will reach people unlikely to convert.
3. Burnout and Inconsistency
Realistically, you can’t do everything on every platform without an entire social media team on your payroll. Most likely, you’re not at that point yet. When just one person posts daily without support or plan, exhaustion takes over. Beware of inconsistency. This is always the silent enemy. When you lose steam, your followers lose interest, algorithms deprioritize you, and effort fizzles out.
4. Brand Misstep Risks
One poorly thought-through post or response damages your reputation. Cold, sterile messaging or posts that ignore diversity or inclusion blow up fast on social media. Sometimes faster than you can respond.
5. Metric Confusion
Be careful not to fall into the trap of vanity metrics. Likes, follows and views boost the ego, but don’t always equal revenue or meaningful engagement. If you chase lurkers instead of forming real connections, you might get high numbers and low returns.
How to Prevent the Major Wipeouts
1. As you step into the world of social media, you need to define your brand voice and your target audience. If you don’t know who you’re talking to, then, really, you’re not speaking to anyone. The JamboJon team can help you nail this! In fact, we offer a FREE brand archetype quiz that will help you with this step. For further clarification, we can also schedule a FREE consultation to review your results in detail.
2. Pick one platform you feel could move your business forward. Where is your audience? For the slightly older crowd, try Facebook. Lean into Instagram for more visual products or services. As a small business owner, you might want to collaborate with other entrepreneurs. If so, LinkedIn is your go-to. To share stories or how-tos, try TikTok or YouTube.
3. Set one measurable goal for the next month to post. Start small. At the very least, you need to post at least once a week. Scale up gradually. According to Adobe.com, there have been studies about how much engagement a business owner should pursue on social media. As of 2023, this is what is recommended:
4. It would be ridiculous to stop your work flow multiple times a day to post on social media. Try doing it in “batches.” Plan a time to calendar your social media posts for the next month (or longer). Include your written content, images, and videos. Be sure to add your links, tags, and hashtags. Use apps like Hootsuite, Buffer, Later, SproutSocial, ZohoSocial, or SocialBee to schedule your posts automatically. For product launches or major marketing campaigns, get those on the calendar well in advance! Give yourself checkpoints to work towards those big days.
5. Do a little research. What are peak posting times? What content appeals to your demographic? Pay attention to what gets the most interaction and engagement. You can even do some deep dives into the platform itself. There is no shortage of professionals willing to offer advice, tips, and tricks for social media.
6. Experiment and adjust. Create different pieces of content: One strong article, one experimental post, testimonials, a spotlight piece, videos of varying lengths, something learning-oriented (ex: a behind-the-scenes or “we screwed up” post). What performs best? What speaks to your audience?
7. At the end of the month, take a look at the data. Adjust. Plan again. As a side note: Be sure to include the topics that interest you. If you’re not feeling it, it’s harder for your audience to play along.
8. At JamboJon, we can help you get started. We excel in building marketing campaigns for business owners. We’ll be by your side as you map out your marketing, target your audience, and measure real success beyond likes (leads, revenue, engagement).
Don’t Be Afraid to Wipe Out
Honestly, as you experiment with social media, you will wipe out occasionally. A post will flop. An ad will underperform. Sometimes, even the best marketing campaigns disappear into the swell. That’s okay. In surfing, wipeouts happen.
“Pro surfer, Carissa Moore, once spoke about wiping out dozens of times before she won world titles. Every attempt taught her something about balance, timing, [and] knowing where the wave breaks.” You can learn a little something from every social media post. You get up. You paddle back out.
Start small. As you pop up on the board, finally riding towards the bigger waves, you feel a calm, meditative rhythm, a connection to your audience and those engaging with you. That freedom to be authentic drives you further out into the ocean. Don’t be afraid to try something new. Imagine the euphoria and adrenaline when your brand gains the attention it deserves. Ride that wave again and again. The ride is worth it.
